What happens if I miss an appointment?
Missed appointments have a direct impact on our service. Not giving prior notice of missing an appointment means that we cannot offer these appointments to other service users and results in a loss of service time. By giving notice ahead of time, you are supporting us to reduce our waiting times for other service users.
Intakes with Care Navigators and Indigo Clinic Appointments:
If you are unable to attend your clinic appointment you are required to give us 2 working days’ notice, either by leaving us a voicemail on 0161 710 1196 or emailing indigo.carenavs@nhs.net
Indigo Voice and Communication Therapy Session:
If you are unable to attend your VCT appointment you are required to give us 2 working days’ notice, either by leaving us a voicemail on 0161 710 1196 or emailing igs.vct@nhs.net
Indigo Counselling Service Sessions:
If you are unable to attend your counselling appointment you are required to give us 1 working days’ notice, either by leaving us a voicemail on 0161 710 1196 or emailing igs.counselling@nhs.net
Our working days are Monday to Friday, excluding English bank holidays.
If you do not give us two working days' notice, then we will follow our missed appointments policy. (Please note, due to the frequency of sessions, our Counselling Service will accept 1 working days’ notice to cancel an appointment, without it counting as a missed appointment).
- Missing two intake appointments (without two working days’ notice) with our Care Navigators within two years will lead to discharge from Indigo.
- Missing two clinical appointments (without two working days’ notice) with our Clinicians (including reviews), within two years, will lead to discharge from Indigo.
- Missing two appointments (without one working days’ notice) with our Indigo Counsellors within two years will lead to discharge from the Indigo Counselling service.
- Missing two appointments (without two working days’ notice) with our Indigo Voice Therapists within two years will lead to discharge from the VCT Service.
Please note if you are discharged from the Counselling or VCT Service, this will NOT impact your overall care with Indigo.
Please also note – If you are discharged from the overall Indigo service your GP will be notified of this. If you are on a hormone treatment plan, this may have implications for you, as your GP may not continue prescribing without a shared care agreement with Indigo.
If you are on a surgical waiting list, you will also be removed from this.
The process
First missed appointment (for intakes, clinical appointments and Voice and Communication Therapy (VCT)):
After your first missed appointment:
You will receive a text message and email (unless you instructed us to contact you in a different way), within around a week of your missed appointment, we will attach a letter to this message, as well as a link to this page, to remind you of the policy once again.
You will then have 7 days from the date of the message, to respond and rebook your appointment.
If we don’t hear from you within that timeframe, we will assume you no longer wish to access the service, and you will be discharged.
This is a good opportunity to tell us of any changes to your circumstances (if you haven’t already), such as needing a pause or any access needs or barriers to you attending your future appointments.
Please note if you are discharged from the overall Indigo service and you are on a hormone treatment plan, this may have implications for you as your GP may not continue prescribing without a shared care agreement with Indigo.
If you are on a surgical waiting list, you will also be removed from this.
You will not be discharged from the overall Indigo service if you miss VCT and Counselling services. The process for those two services is detailed below.
For Counselling:
After your first missed appointment:
You will receive a text message and email (unless you instructed us to contact you in a different way), within a couple of days of your missed appointment, we will attach a letter to this message, as well as a link to this page, to remind you of the policy once again.
You will need to confirm your attendance for the next booked session (which will be communicated to you in the message) at least 1 working day before the session.
If we don’t hear from you within that timeframe, we will assume you no longer wish to access the service, and you will be discharged.
This is a good opportunity to tell us of any changes to your circumstances (if you haven’t already), such as needing a pause, or any access needs or barriers to you attending your future appointments.
Second missed appointment
If you miss a second appointment, without giving us two working days’ notice (one day for Counselling), within a two-year period – you will be discharged from the service. If this second missed appointment is for VCT/Counselling,, you will be discharged from that service. If the second missed appointment is for the main Indigo clinic, you will be discharged from Indigo as a whole.
We will send you a text and email (unless you instructed us to contact you in a different way) and attach a letter to this for your records.
Self-booking
Indigo is now using self-booking for some appointments. If you are sent a link to self-book an appointment, you have 7 days to respond and book in.
If you do not book in for an appointment using this link, we will follow our “unable to contact policy” which will give you four weeks to contact us.
If you book an appointment via the self-booking link and then do not attend this, then the missed appointment policy outlined above will be followed.
The message was sent to all active Indigo service users, to make them aware of the policy changing. A missed appointment policy has always existed on this page of the website. Those who missed any appointments would have been reminded of it, but if you didn't ever miss an appointment, you might not have ever visited this page!
What is on this page now is just an updated policy which we wanted to make everyone aware of for transparency.
As stated above, we have always had a missed appointment policy, where we contacted people to encourage them to inform us in good time if they were to miss an appointment, allowed them to request any reasonable adjustments which would allow them to attend further appointments, and let them know the consequences of missing appointments (up to and including discharge from Indigo).
As a result of such an increase in appointments being missed, we have updated the policy as of 1st April 2026, to decrease the clinical time lost so we can see more people and move through our waiting list quicker.
We understand it's frustrating to see so many missed appointments and you're right to be upset. We want to be transparent with our service users and make them aware of exactly why the policy needed to change.
We accept that occasional missed appointments are inevitable, however the current frequency means that people are missing out on being seen sooner and we needed to take action to improve this. Every missed appointment is someone on the waiting list who could have been seen that bit sooner.
We have always allowed for exceptional circumstances in our Missed Appointment policies, including this updated version. If someone misses an appointment we make sure to communicate in the Missed Appointment letter that if you haven't already, that's the perfect opportunity to request reasonable adjustments for disabilities/long-term conditions, which we try our best to accommodate.
Tell us about any barriers to attending future appointments or any conditions need to be aware of which may make attendance difficult. In some cases this may mean your missed appointment is reversed, in others it won't - depending on the reason for missing the appointment.
There are also emergency situations which would mean someone was not able to attend the appointment, which we consider on a case-by-case basis as everyone's situation is unique to them.
We cannot continue with such a high number of lost appointment slots and we're sure you can understand that unfortunately they were not all due to exceptional circumstances.
We hope this policy change will empower and encourage our service users to remain engaged with their care and with us as a service, informing us of any change in circumstances or contact details.
This policy is not designed to punish, but to achieve better care for our all of our service users, including those who are still waiting to be seen.
We expect our service users as a rule to give us two days' notice so that we can attempt to fill their appointment with another service user and therefore not miss the opportunity to take someone further in their journey.
If someone is not able to give two days' notice, let the Care Navigator team know and it will be discussed with the Clinic Manager.
We offer a mix of both in-person and online appointments. One of the main benefits of being a Regional Clinic is being able to see, assess and support local service users without having to travel sometimes hundreds of miles, as can be the case with national GICs. We are bound by the NHS National Service Specification, which specifies that for some appointments, we must see service users in person (such as at least one of the initial assessment appointments and for surgery referrals).
This is because we have a duty of care to ensure any assessment is thorough and accurate, which sometimes can only be done in person.
Not all our appointments are required to be face-to-face, and we are always trying to improve our service user experience by offering online options and more recently sending self-booking links for eligible appointments so service users can select a slot that suits them.