%20(5).png)
Missed Appointment Policy
A missed dental appointment means lost clinical time to the practice and deprives other patients of the opportunity to benefit from this time. During this period, we have an empty chair, wages and overheads still have to be paid and the business makes a loss. This can only then be covered by increasing charges to patients, something which we don’t want to do.
Our fair philosophy
We aim to keep our fees highly competitive for the quality of materials and care we provide to our patients and we do not build missed appointment costs into our fees. We feel this would be unfair on those patients who attend their appointments, to have to pay for those individuals who do not.
Understanding
We have a high demand for appointments and whilst understanding that everyone forgets from time to time, missing a dental appointment is incredibly frustrating from everyone’s point of view. The time could have been used to the advantage of other patients and is why we have a simple 1-2-3 missed appointment policy, which aims to be to everyone.
Automatic missed appointment fees
If you miss a dental appointment or cancel at short notice at The Dental Centre an automatic charge will be added to your account as outlined in our 1-2-3 missed appointment policy on the next page.
​
First missed appointment
If it is the first appointment that you have ever missed with us, we will try to contact you to check everything is ok and arrange to re-book this appointment.
​
Second missed appointment
Upon missing a second appointment, a charge of £10 per 10-minute appointment length will automatically be added to your account. Whilst this charge will not fully cover the cost of the lost clinical time, it will allow us to partially cover our overheads, thus helping to prevent raising our prices unnecessarily. Further appointment’s will not be booked until this charge has been paid.
​
Subsequent missed appointments
On missing any subsequent appointments, we reserve the right to charge the full cost of the appointment and suspend your registration at our practice. Further appointments will only be booked after settlement of your account and, full payment made in advance for all future appointments.
Dental appointment reminders
We want to do everything we can to help you remember your appointments to ensure our clinical time is maximised, waiting times for appointments are kept down and our fees kept as low as possible.
Appointment cards
Whenever you book a dental appointment with us at reception, you will always be given an appointment card which contains details of your appointment(s).
SMS/E-mail reminders
In order to remind you of your appointments booked a long time in advance, we offer a complimentary SMS reminder service. We will endeavour to send you a text the day before your appointment. Help us help you, by ensuring we have an up-to-date mobile number and email address. Please not that our SMS reminder service and telephone reminder service is provided as a courtesy only, and we are unable for practical reasons to be able to guarantee this service will be made.
***Subsequent Missed Appointment charges are based on an hourly rate of £100 per hour which represents the running costs of the practice***