A DOCTOR has called for time-wasting patients who miss appointments to be fined.

Blackburn GP Paul Fourie, who runs Witton Medical Centre, suggested fining patients £10 if they keep failing to attend appointments.

His calls come after he said the GP practice had dozens of no-shows who failed to cancel appointments every week.

He said: “I would personally support a move to fine them.

“We do get repeat offenders who miss appointments and don’t cancel them.

“Sometimes you get patients who make an appointment on the day and then fail to turn up.

“So I’d like to see a small token, maybe a fine of £10 for those patients who repeatedly miss appointments, without any medical reason.”

Dr Fourie said the policy at his surgery was to give patients a verbal and written warning for missing appointments.

He said: “If patients miss appointments a couple of times, we’ll verbally remind them when they’re booking their next one that they can’t keep doing it, and if they persist, we send them a written warning.

“This could end up in them being removed from the surgery list if they persist.”

It has also emerged in an audit of eight GP practices in Pendle, that over the last week, 137 GP and 113 practice nurse appointments were not attended by patients.

Dr Fourie added: “There are a lot of practical difficulties to introducing fines.

“It would be very difficult to enforce and there’s an argument that it could start to erode away the free-at-the-point-of-need NHS.

“Also, there may be reasons why patients miss appointments and cancel them, such as they’re vulnerable and mentally ill and that would penalise them.

“But fining patients is something I’d back.”

Among GPs, opinion is split on the issue with some saying there is clear evidence that patients who serially miss appointments are more likely to be socially disadvantaged and would only penalise them further.

Fining patients who miss NHS appointments has long been considered by the Government, who said missed appointments cost the NHS more than £900million a year.

Former Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt said he did not have a problem with the idea in principle back in 2015.