Should patients be charged for missed appointments with their Doctors?

The above question was asked to the It-Your-Vote community.

We provided additional information for the question which was:

"In the study by GP's magazine (www.gponline.com) they have reported that a staggering 16.4 million appointments a year booked with GP's and other practice staff were missed/unattended. For at least every no-show there are up to 20 patients forced to wait weeks or even months for appointments. Should we now start to charge patients for appointments that are missed as a deterrent to stop this from happening in the future. Or, do you think that we pay our NI contribution and are therefore, entitled to miss appointments if we have a good reason.".

The available answers for this questions were:

1. No-do not charge for missed appointments

2. No view

3. Yes-should be charged for missed appointments