Murphy’s Logic: No-shows for health-care appointments just disrespectful

No one likes being stood up.

It’s insulting when someone doesn’t show up when they said they would. Disrespectful.

But it’s happening hundreds of times a week… In the health-care system.

In 2022, 22,000 people didn’t show up for medical procedures in Nova Scotia. Excluding weekends and holidays, that’s 88 missed appointments every day. Eighty-eight appointments that could have gone to people who are waiting for those procedures.

New Brunswick has brought in a toll-free telephone line to make it easier for people to cancel and it’s reduced the problem by half. Nova Scotia is doing the same thing. But even if it has the same effect, there will still be thousands of missed appointments every years.

We often hear complaints about long waits in the health-care system, with the implication that we don’t have enough resources to provide the service we need. But at least some of those precious resources are being squandered by people who don’t show up. They are part of the problem.

We have a right to expect better from our health-care system. But we also have a responsibility to treat the system, and the people who work in it, with more respect.