Which patients miss appointments with general practice and the reasons why: a systematic review

Missed GP appointments have considerable time and cost implications for healthcare services.

This systematic review aims to explore the rate of missed primary care appointments, what the reported reasons are for appointments being missed, and which patients are more likely to miss appointments.

This study reports the findings of a systematic review. The included studies report the rate or reasons of missed appointments in a primary care setting.

Databases were searched using a pre-defined search strategy. Eligible studies were selected for inclusion based on detailed inclusion criteria through title, abstract, and full text screening. Quality was assessed on all included studies, and findings were synthesised to answer the research questions.

A total of 26 studies met the inclusion criteria for the review. Of these, 19 reported a rate of missed appointments. The mean rate of missed appointments was 15.2%, with a median of 12.9%. Twelve studies reported a reason that appointments were missed, with work or family/childcare commitments, forgetting the appointment, and transportation difficulties most commonly reported. In all, 20 studies reported characteristics of people likely to miss appointments. Patients who were likely to miss appointments were those from minority ethnicity, low sociodemographic status, and younger patients (<21 years).

Findings from this review have potential implications for targeted interventions to address missed appointments in primary care. This is the first step for clinicians to be able to target interventions to reduce the rate of missed appointments.