A crowd of anonymous faces graced the front page of the Lincolnshire Echo this week as the paper went to dramatic lengths to explain how problems in the National Health Service might not all be down to the managers.

Editor Mike Sassi and his deputy Richard Bowyer decided on the shock tactic of giving over their front page to some of the nameless patients who had failed to turn up to operations in Lincolnshire hospitals in the past year.

There were 682 – costing the NHS £682,000 in total.

The paper sourced head and shoulders file pictures for the P1 splash and used them to illustrate the hundreds of missing patients at hospitals around the county – in particular Lincoln County Hospital and Boston’s Pilgrim Hospital.

Richard said: “We wanted to make an impact with this story on our front page and highlight the enormity of the problem.

“It’s not often you can look at the fact that it could be the patients that are causing problems in the NHS.

“The front page has worked too – our mailbag is beginning to bulge with readers’ views on the topic and how it’s affecting them.”

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