Health services in Guernsey have called for the community to help reduce the number of missed medical appointments.

More than 5,500 clinician outpatient appointments were not used last year after patients did not attend, the States of Guernsey said.

The Committee for Health & Social Care and the Medical Specialist Group (MSG) have urged islanders to “do everything possible” to honour their appointments.

MSG Chair, Dr Steve Evans, said working with patients was a “priority”.

He said: ‘We’re grateful to all the patients who do come for their appointments on time but it is always a shame when someone does not turn up, as that appointment time could have been used for someone else.

“We are looking at ways to reduce missed appointments, such as sending out electronic reminders and, where appropriate, arranging follow-up appointments at the time of the first appointment.”

In 2023, 4,849 of the 82,139 appointments for adults (about 6%) were either not attended by the patient or cancelled with less than 24 hours’ notice, the States said.

For paediatric appointments, it was 740 out of 7,152 (about 10%).

Deputy Al Brouard, said non-attendance was “far more challenging” to manage than cancelling or re-arranging ahead of time.

He said: ” If we could really cut down on the thousands of missed appointments then it would have an obvious knock-on benefit to our efforts to maximise the capacity our services have, particularly ensuring clinicians’ time is not wasted.”