Text reminders and rebooking reduce missed visits in London
Several London hospital outpatient units have shifted routine admin onto phones rather than paper, using SMS reminders with instant rebooking links so people can move or confirm hospital slots without calling, after trusts widened digital messaging during 2023–2025 to tackle missed appointments that waste time and push back care.
NHS England’s outpatient statistics for 2023–2024 recorded just over 124 million appointments nationally with a 7–8% “did not attend” rate across the year, and quarterly data in early 2025 show a similar national pattern, meaning roughly nine to ten million contacts risk being lost annually unless clinics make it simpler to rearrange without penalties or long calls to busy booking centres.
Local audits published by large urban trusts report that adding two SMS prompts—seven days and 48 hours before the slot—cuts non-attendance by 10–20% relative within months, while one London service tracking January to June 2025 found the DNA rate fall from 9.1% to 7.4% after switching from letters to opt-out text reminders tied to a one-click web form.
The policy backdrop is straightforward: since 2023, national guidance has encouraged trusts to use low-cost digital channels and to capture mobile numbers in clinics, and the NHS App’s growth—more than 30 million registered users by mid-2024—has given hospitals a second route to push confirmations and send maps or preparation notes that used to arrive late by post.
Equity remains the pressure point, with trust equality analyses in 2024–2025 consistently showing higher non-attendance among younger adults, people in the most deprived quintiles and patients who rely on pay-as-you-go mobiles or shared phones, so reception teams in parts of London now offer on-site number checks and paper backups to avoid excluding those without reliable data or devices.
For residents, the change appears as quieter friction: a morning text that confirms time and location, a link that moves the slot to a lunch break instead of a missed morning, and fewer wasted journeys, while hospitals count the gain in fuller clinic lists, shorter follow-up backlogs and a steady reduction in empty chairs that used to be booked but unused.
