Hundreds of thousands of patients across the South West failed to show up for hospital appointments, according to new figures released today.
Department of Health chiefs said last year 346,614 patients across the region failed to show up for appointments, wasting NHS resources.
Government ministers were today urging patients to keep hospital appointments and for hospitals to use text messages and Skype to remind patients about appointments.
However, hospitals in the Westcountry already use text services to remind patients of appointments including Derriford Hospital and The Royal Cornwall Hospital, Treliske, Truro.
At North Devon District Hospital, patients receive a telephone automated voice message around a week before their appointment reminding them to attend.
Jono Broad, independent patients ambassador for the hospital, said: "The hospital runs a really excellent service for reminding patients of their appointments.
"Failing to cancel and missing appointments should be avoided at all costs and there is no excuse."
Last year in the South West region there were 4,961,836 outpatient appointments.
The number of patients who failed to attend represented 7%. This compares to 7.8% of patients out of 4,749,219 outpatient appointments not attending in 2009/10.
Health Minister Simon Burns said on the whole last year the NHS made good progress to shrink the number of missed outpatient appointments by more than 250,000 against a background of rising demand.
More than 800,000 more patients had an appointment last year.
However, according to the data, during 2011/12 there were still around 5.5 million missed appointments in the NHS.
Overall the NHS carried out nearly 53 million outpatient appointments – meaning more than one in ten cases patients failed to show up for appointments.
Mr Burns said he was pleased the number of missed appointments last year had fallen in the last year.
He said: "It is important that people realise that not turning up for their agreed appointments, means other patients care might be delayed and doctors and nurses time could be wasted, costing tax payers money.
"Today we are highlighting the number of missed appointments so people can see the impact this is having on their NHS.
"Under the NHS Constitution we all have rights to treatment, such as being seen within 18 weeks.
"Patients often have genuine reasons to miss an appointment, but it can have a big impact on the care we can offer to other patients.
"It is important that the public understand we have responsibilities too, like not wasting precious NHS resources.
"I'm glad to see that the NHS is increasingly using simple ideas such as texting their patients before an appointment or seeing them via Skype.
"These could have a dramatic impact and I want to see more hospitals making use of them."
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