Appointment Terms

Managing missed and cancelled appointments.

To manage our appointment system effectively and provide a high quality service, it is important that patients attend for their appointments as planned. Appointments can be made or rescheduled by calling our practice. If you have any queries or concerns about an appointment, please call the Practice to speak to our team.

Email reminders are sent 24 hours before an appointment and patients are requested to inform the practice of any changes to their contact details. Please note that email reminders are sent as a courtesy and may not be sent/received for reasons out of our control (IT failure, change in email address etc). Therefore, failure to attend, by not receiving an email, will not be considered a valid exception of our policy.

If you are unable to keep your dental appointment, then please call the Practice giving us as much notice as possible-at least 2 full working days- so that we can offer your time slot to another patient. If less notice is given without a valid reason, the appointment will be considered to have been broken and may incur a charge.

Rescheduling or delay of appointments by the practice

• We will only reschedule or delay a patient’s appointment in unavoidable circumstances, in such cases we will:
• Contact the patient as soon as we are aware of the need to reschedule or delay and explain the reason why
• At the time of contact we will offer the earliest next available appointment
• If the patient is unable to commit to an appointment at that contact, then we will ask the patient to contact us and will book a new appointment at the earliest time available

Cancellation of an appointment or a missed appointment by the patient

Failure to attend is defined as:

• Arriving late for an appointment (2 minutes late or more)
• Not arriving for an appointment
• Not giving enough notice of not being able to attend – we require 2 full working days’ notice
• Not arriving for an appointment due to not receiving an email reminder

NHS Appointments

Although missed NHS appointments cannot be charged for, we have a very firm policy regarding non-attendance. Patients who fail to attend two NHS dental appointments are unlikely to be offered any further appointments in line with NHS regulations (missed appointments do not have to be consecutive). While surgeries cannot charge you for not turning up, NHS England has the right to ask you to find another dental surgery if you continue to miss appointments (What happens when you visit an NHS dentist, 2021) https://www.nhs.uk/nhs-services/dentists/what-happens-when-you-visit-the-dentist/ If you miss an NHS appointment and do not attend again within 24 months, we may not be able to see you again.

Private and plan appointments

Patients who attend a Hygienist appointment pay a reservation fee. If a Hygienist appointment is cancelled by the patient at short notice (less than one full working days’ notice) or missed, then this payment will be lost, and a new fee will need to be paid before a new appointment can be booked. If a patient fails to attend a Private or Plan dental appointment with the dentist, they will be charged for some or all of the cost of that appointment, in proportion to the length of the appointment and any laboratory fees incurred. The final decision is at the discretion of the Practice owner. We reserve the right to ask for a deposit for private and plan appointments with our dentist, which will be forfeited in the event of failure to attend as outlined above. If more than 2 appointments are missed, future appointments may not be offered.