UP to £12m of NHS cash is lost each year by patients who do not bother to turn up for GP appointments, the Daily Echo can reveal today.

Across Hampshire and the Isle of Wight, an average of 600,000 people fail to keep appointments with their local doctors, and 200,000 do not attend primary care nurse appointments, wasting around 90,000 hours.

This shocking figure is the latest in a long-line of revelations about how the public is wasting vital health service funds, which should be spent on patient care.

Our You Can Help Your NHS campaign, which has been backed by Prime Minister Tony Blair and Health Minister Alan Milburn, aims to save £500,000 of health service cash.

More than £2,700 has already been saved after Winchester and Eastleigh Healthcare NHS Trust announced a drop in the number of missed hospital appointments over the past two months.

But it is not just hospital patients who are to blame for these losses, as these latest figures show.

Surveys by the Doctor Patient Partnership and the Institute of Health Services Management in 2001 suggest that 17 million GP and 5.5m nurse appointments in primary care are missed each year in the UK.

The British Dental Association's general dental services committee estimates that missed appointments account for five per cent of all dentists' time.

With each missed GP appointment believed to cost the NHS between £15 and £20, it is easy to see how the cost mounts up.

Dr Nigel Watson, chairman of the Local Medical Committee for Southampton and South West Hampshire, said: "There are a number of people who book appointments and don't turn up.

"We publish a list of the number who don't turn up and it's 80 or 90 patients at least who do not attend each month."

Dr Watson, who is a GP at a practice in New Milton, said the situation had got so bad that he had to take action.

He added: "What we are starting to do if people do not attend is that we send a letter to them and if they do it several times then we suggest they try to find another practice."

HAVE you missed out on treatment or care because the hospital could not afford it? Do you have any ideas on how the public could help the NHS? Call health reporter Emma Barnett on 023 8042 4505, fax 023 8042 4545 or e-mail using the link above.