Quantitative section

Setting: A children’s hospital and referring general practices in South-West England.

Patients: All children newly referred to the above children’s hospital as outpatients.

Exposure: Non-attendance at hospital appointments.

Outcomes: Likelihood of coming from deprived background or having a child protection alert on file.

Qualitative section

Study cohort: General practitioners from practices with notably high or low non-attendance rates at hospital appointments.

Approach: Semistructured interviews.

Themes: Communication of non-attendance from secondary to primary care, coding of non-attendance within primary care records, primary care approaches to non-attendance at hospital appointments.