Nearly one in four people have missed an NHS appointment because they forgot about it or arrived too late, according to a new survey of patients in England.
The findings come as the NHS launches a campaign encouraging people to turn on push notifications in the NHS App so they receive reminders about upcoming appointments and can cancel or rearrange them if necessary.
Health officials say missed appointments waste valuable clinical time and resources, which are funded by taxpayers, and could instead be used to treat other patients.
The survey of 2,000 people aged 16 and over found that 12 per cent said they had previously forgotten about an appointment, while 11 per cent said they had arrived too late to be seen.
New data also shows that patients failed to attend 16 million GP appointments in 2025. This represents around one in every 23 appointments, or 4.3 per cent of all bookings, roughly the equivalent of a full day of missed appointments at every GP practice in England each month.
Despite this, the number of GP appointments continues to rise. In 2025, GP practices arranged 376 million appointments, an increase of 8.4 million, or 2.3 per cent, compared with 2024.
The NHS hopes its new “Tap the NHS App” campaign will help reduce missed appointments by encouraging people to switch on notifications and manage their bookings digitally. Adverts promoting the campaign are appearing on pharmacy bags, radio channels and social media.
Patients are also being urged to use the NHS App to cancel or rearrange appointments they cannot attend, allowing those time slots to be offered to other patients.
The app can also be used to request repeat prescriptions, reducing the need for patients to visit their GP practice in person.
Last year, the NHS introduced a prescription tracking feature within the NHS App which allows users to follow the progress of their medication in a similar way to online shopping deliveries. The feature provides updates on when a prescription has been processed and when it is ready for collection. It is currently available at around 2,000 pharmacies across England.
Dr Amanda Doyle, National Director for Primary Care and Community Services at NHS England, said many patients have genuine reasons for missing or arriving late to appointments, but informing practices as early as possible helps ensure appointments are not wasted.
She said people can reduce the risk of forgetting appointments by enabling notifications in the NHS App, which provide reminders and allow users to quickly cancel or rearrange bookings if needed.
Dr Doyle added that it was encouraging to see GP practices deliver more than eight million additional appointments in 2025 and said she hoped the campaign would help increase that number further in 2026.
Health Innovation Minister Dr Zubir Ahmed said busy schedules can make it easy to forget or rearrange healthcare appointments.
He encouraged patients to enable notifications on the NHS App so they can stay on top of their bookings and inform services if they need to reschedule.
He said cancelling or rearranging appointments allows someone else to be seen instead, helping the NHS reduce waiting times.
Separate figures from the Office for National Statistics show that more people are choosing to contact their GP online when they have a health concern.
Around 75.2 per cent of adults said they found it easy to contact their GP practice, an increase from 71.6 per cent the previous year.
The NHS App now has more than 40 million registered users. Through the app, patients can view their GP health record, order repeat prescriptions and access a range of NHS services to manage their care.
Users can enable notifications and update their contact details within the settings section of the app to ensure they receive important messages about their healthcare.
The survey on NHS appointments was conducted by Censuswide on behalf of NHS England.
Find out more about the NHS App here.
