MISSED appointments for hospital and doctors' surgeries across Craven are below national averages, but still show worrying numbers.

Figures released by Developing Patient Partnership (DPP) and the Institute of Healthcare show nationally more than 10 million GP appointments are being missed a year.

With a doctor's appointment costing an average of £18, the consequences of lost time and money are causing concern.

On top of this, nearly six million hospital appointments are being missed a year, costing a staggering £575 million.

Surgeries across Craven are currently finding ways of dealing with their own missed appointments.

Dr Christopher Craig, senior partner at Dyneley House Surgery in Skipton, said anyone who missed two appointments had a letter sent to them.

"People who persistently miss appointments are asked to leave the practice. Because it's free, it has no value. People think because they're not paying for it, no-one else is," he added.

Four per cent of patients miss their appointment at Dyneley House - the equivalent of one GP's appointments for the week being missed every month. For nurse practitioners the figure is similar, five per cent of all appointments are missed, again costing one week's work in a month.

Fisher Medical Centre in Skipton has an average of 20 missed appointments per week, including slots for both doctors and nurses.

The surgery offers 800 appointments a week and writes to anyone who misses three.

At Bentham the number of people who missed appointments is published monthly in the parish newsletter.

Practice manager Shirley Macdonald told the Herald the number of people missing appointments varied from 60 to 80 per month.

"For May we had 73 people missing appointments, for June it was 77. We took the decision to publish the figures on the medical page of the local newsletter."

At Cross Hills Surgery - one of the biggest in the area with around 12,000 patients - a total of 147 people missed appointments during the last 30 days.

Acting practice manager Jacqui Emmott said their figures were shortly to be displayed on a plasma screen of information which was being put in the waiting room.

"We do record appointments when patients have not attended. Then every so often we run an admin search which gives us the figures.

"Once the plasma screen is installed, we will be displaying these figures on that," she added.

At Grassington Medical Centre the missed attendance figures were smaller, although still showed a total of 35 people failing to attend doctor or nurse appointments during July.

According to practice manager Liz Henfrey although the figure is a small one, it is still a problem for the surgery.

"Our figure won't be as bad as those in some inner city areas, but we are a small practice.

"However, on a sliding scale of economics, it's still a problem for us," she added.

Townhead Surgery in Settle saw 175 missed appointments during the month of July. The surgery currently has 9,499 patients on its books.

According to practice manager Elizabeth Wrigley, the figures are kept and are accessible to the surgery, but nothing is done with them at the moment.

At Airedale Hospital in Steeton a hospital spokesman said the trust remained below the national average for missed appointments.

She said: "At Airedale NHS Trust we remain below the national average for the number of our patients who do not arrive for their outpatient appointment."

Of 2,000 new patients seen every month, around four to five per cent will not keep their appointment and will also fail to let the hospital know they are not coming.

The spokeswoman added: "We do keep this figure low because we currently use a partial booking system.

"We send patients a letter four weeks before their appointment and ask them to contact us to book the time of their appointment and this has had a significant positive impact on patient attendance.

"We do understand there are many different reasons why patients cannot attend, but would encourage our patients to let us know as soon as possible so we can make the best use of valuable clinic time and give others the opportunity to attend," she added.