Non-attending patients in general practice
Authors: Frans T Smits, Gerben ter Riet
Journal: The Lancet Public Health (2017)

In a large retrospective cohort analysis1Ellis DA McQueenie R McConnachie A Wilson P Williamson AE Demographic and practice factors predicting repeated nonattendance in primary care: a national retrospective cohort analysis.Lancet Public Health. 2017; 2: 551-559Scopus (72) Google Scholar of more than half a million patients and more than 13 million visits in Scottish primary care, David Ellis and colleagues found that 19% of patients missed more than two appointments during a 3 year period. They found that, after adjusting for the number of appointments, men, patients aged 16–30 years or older than 90 years, and patients of low socioeconomic status were significantly more likely to miss multiple appointments. Urban practices in affluent areas with waiting times of a few days were more likely to have patients who repeatedly missed appointments. The authors suggest targeting interventions at the practice level rather than at the patient level because the practice factor seemed stronger. Ellis and colleagues framed the issue of repeated non-attendance in terms of engagement, markers of vulnerability and poor health outcomes, health inequalities, and unmet needs. It might also be interesting to pose some questions from a societal benefit–harm perspective: (1) how much will the time saved by non-attendance benefit those patients who do attend and the health-care personnel involved? (2) What actions, if any, are appropriate when a 17-year-old does not present at a consultation, and what actions are appropriate when a 92-year-old does not present? And (3) what are the health effects and costs if the consultations that were missed had been attended? We believe that approximate answers to these questions require a much more complex analysis than that done by Ellis and colleagues and should probably be tackled through mathematical models with many uncertain parameters (eg, distributions of diagnoses and diagnosis-specific costs and effects). The authors rightly promise more extensive analyses incorporating medical diagnoses, for example, and we feel that perhaps they should have postponed publication until full analysis of the, apparently, more in-depth material. Their analyses might benefit from a formal multilevel approach to these clustered data and, given that 54% of patients did not miss any appointments, we wonder whether the use of zero-inflated negative binomial models yield different results. Finally, Ellis and colleagues could use the huge size of their dataset to try to unravel the mechanisms behind non-attendance more precisely, studying special effects in subgroups (such as cross-level interactions).2Glass TA Goodman SN Hernán MA Samet JM Causal inference in public health.Annu Rev Public Health. 2013; 34: 61-75Crossref PubMed Scopus (206) Google Scholar They also might consider qualitative research to study the reasons for non-attendance. Of course, the results presented by Ellis and colleagues can only be generalised to countries with a list system, where the patient is not billed for a missed appointment. Nonetheless, any consultation behaviour reveals information about our patients and GP–patient interaction, which might prompt changes in our clinical work. In this respect, non-attendance is perhaps the least interesting of these consultation behaviours. Of more interest is persistent frequent attendance.3Vedsted P Fink P Sorensen HT Olesen F Physical, mental and social factors associated with frequent attendance in Danish general practice. A population-based cross-sectional study.Soc Sci Med. 2004; 59: 813-823Crossref PubMed Scopus (55) Google Scholar, 4Smits FT Brouwer HJ ter Riet G van Weert HC Epidemiology of frequent attenders: a 3-year historic cohort study comparing attendance, morbidity and prescriptions of one-year and persistent frequent attenders.BMC Public Health. 2009; 9: 36Crossref PubMed Scopus (111) Google Scholar Frequent attenders have 2–3 times more somatic, psychological, and social problems and are responsible for substantial use and costs in primary and secondary health care.5Smits FT Brouwer HJ Zwinderman AH et al.Morbidity and doctor characteristics only partly explain the substantial healthcare expenditures of frequent attenders: a record linkage study between patient data and reimbursements data.BMC Fam Pract. 2013; 14: 138Crossref PubMed Scopus (40) Google Scholar And who are the patients who have complaints but do not attend the GP at all? Are they too anxious to make an appointment and avoid proper care? In conclusion, we are not yet convinced that the interventions that Ellis and colleagues propose will yield more benefits than harms. At a practice level, GPs could consider adjusting practice rules. For young patients, one can imagine new consultation methods (such as email, Skype, SMS-reminders, or walk-in clinics), and, for older patients, non-attendance might be an indicator of severe illness or memory loss and should, perhaps, trigger house calls. Very often, waiting times cause unnecessary and unpleasant discussions with patients, which might be better reduced to a minimum, especially in deprived areas. In the meantime, the debate about the usefulness of monetary fines in case of non-attendance will continue.6Jones D Loader N Should patients pay to see the GP?.BMJ. 2016; 352: h6800Crossref PubMed Scopus (8) Google Scholar We declare no competing interests. Demographic and practice factors predicting repeated non-attendance in primary care: a national retrospective cohort analysisThe findings that both patient and practice characteristics contribute to non-attendance of general practice appointments raise important questions for both the management of patients who miss multiple appointments and the effectiveness of existing strategies that aim to increase attendance. Addressing these issues should lead to improvements in provision of services and public health. Full-Text PDF Open AccessNon-attending patients in general practiceWe agree with Frans Smits and Gerben ter Riet when, in their comment,1 they suggest that it could be valuable to frame questions relating to non-attendance in terms of societal benefits and harms. However, we would like to take this opportunity to provide some additional clarification with regards to our analysis and presentation of results.2 Full-Text PDF Open Access