Reminder to honour GP dates in Leeds

The scheme is in response to figures that show over 100,000 appointments were missed in the city over a six-month period last year.

Starting this week, the team of purple ‘memory joggers’ will take part in park runs, appearing at community events and jogging past busy footfall areas of the city, with the aim of reminding people to take action to ensure they cancel their appointment if they no longer need it.

Dr Gordon Sinclair, Clinical Chair for NHS Leeds Clinical Commissioning Group (CCG), said: “The main reason for the high number of missed appointments is that patients just forget about them.

“The aim of the Memory Joggers is to raise awareness of the problem of missed appointments and encourage people to do something to remind them to attend the ones they need and cancel those they don’t.”

Between April and September 2017 a total of 103,653 appointments were missed.

This represents nearly four per cent of all appointments that were made.

The ‘memory joggers’ are part of a wider campaign that NHS Leeds CCG is running this summer that urges people to: Cancel appointments by giving your practice a call or going online; Making sure your details are up-to-date so you can receive text or email reminders; Putting your appointment in the diary or an alert in your phone.

Passers-by will be in with a chance of winning a wellbeing prize by snapping a picture of a ‘memory jogger’ and sharing it on social media with the hashtag #IWontForget to help raise awareness of the issue.