A cancer patient and her husband are furious after a hospital once again automatically texted her incorrect appointments just two months after they were assured the issue had been resolved once and for all.

In October, Mrs Morgan, from Basildon, who didn’t want to give her first name, received text messages from Basildon Hospital three days in a row threatening to discharge her if she did not attend an appointment that wasn’t hers.

After calling the hospital she was informed that the error had been made due to a new service which sends patients appointment reminders by text.

She said: “I’ve had enough, I want it to stop. They’re obviously not checking anything, we had all this sorted last time so I don’t understand why it’s happening again. I knew the text couldn’t have been for me because the oncology nurses said they would call me when they had the results.

“They have a weekly meeting every Tuesday, and we received the message on Monday. Why did they text when they could have called me directly.”

Mrs Morgan is currently awaiting the results of a biopsy to determine the next stage of treatment for bladder cancer.

Her husband said: “We were assured last time that we would receive no more texts.

“I told them if we did then I would like a meeting at the hospital, and he said, yeah, yeah, yeah no problem. But now we’re back to this.”

Text messages sent by the hospital said: “Non-Attendance costs the NHS approx £160. Please reply ‘YES’ to confirm attendance, ‘RE-BOOK’ to rearrange or reply ‘CANCEL’ if appt no longer needed. Reply ‘STOP’ to opt out. Thank you.”

Another stated that if Mrs Morgan did not attend she “may be discharged”.

A spokesperson for Basildon Hospital said: “On Thursday 14 September, Basildon Hospital launched a new service which sends patients appointment reminders by text.

“Currently, one in ten outpatients do not attend their local hospital appointment which means that there are many unused slots that could be reallocated to another patient.

“Setting up the text reminder system involves processing a large amount of data on more than one million patients, using information from patient records.

“Unfortunately, in a very small number of cases, errors have been reported to us. We are very sorry for the concern caused to Mrs Morgan and we will contact her as soon as possible to confirm that the correction has been made.”