NHS Penalty Fees

There have been calls recently for people failing to show for NHS appointments to be fined. As the only sector with a history of charging something toward the cost of treatment and for fining no shows is NHS Dentistry, this would mean creating processes and supporting IT throughout the rest of the NHS. The NHS generally is operating on ancient kit and software. 

People are resistant to change. Most find it scary. It’s a core tenant of change management therefore, that you sell change by making the benefit personal to the people you want to change behaviour. 

I suggested to an NHS research group some time ago that just saying how many missed appointments in each GP practise was pretty meaningless to most people. If they reframed it to say “There were x missed appointments in the last month. This means you’ve had to wait an extra x days for your appointment”, peer pressure would do the rest without them spending a penny on a cure. 

Similarly, they ought to print the cost of consultant and clinic appointments on letters and drug costs on prescriptions. 

You don’t have to pay to create an actual penalty fee system in order to get folk to value what they get with the NHS and to think about how their habits affect services. 

Note here that government IT projects are notorious for spiralling costs and time over runs.

I’ve recently noticed that some of the correspondence for my own appointments are now doing this so some within the NHS agree with me.

Activating peer pressure may well be quicker and cheaper than fining folk ultimately.