Patients will be told cost of missed appointments and may be charged

Patients who miss an appointment will be told how much it cost the NHS and could potentially be billed for it, the health secretary has announced.

Appearing on Question Time on BBC1 on 2 July, Jeremy Hunt said that the government had taken a first step towards introducing greater patient responsibility for the use of resources by introducing measures to ensure that patients who miss appointments are told how much NHS money they have wasted.

Hunt said that the NHS was “very stretched for resources” and that he had not ruled out charging people who do not attend their appointment.

“If we are going to square the …