Practice Policy

Fail to attend and short notice cancellation policy.

It is inevitable that sometimes you may need to cancel or rearrange your dental appointments.

We would ask patients to give as much notice as possible when cancelling an appointment, so we can have the opportunity to offer the appointment slot to someone else although, we do understand that during an emergency this is not always possible.

Non-attendance and cancellations at short notice without a valid reason deprive other patients of our services. Appointments are often wasted as people do not attend. Over 15 appointments per month are being wasted when these appointments could have been used by other patients.

If a patient fails to attend or short notice cancels a booked appointment, the initial deposit will be charged we will send a letter or e-mail reminding them that in future they must cancel appointments if they are unable to attend. A further deposit will be taken for dentist or hygienist appointments.

Should a 3rd appointment be failed, or short notice cancelled, the individual will be removed from the practice list permanently and will no longer be able to book any appointments.

 An appointment is considered to have been broken if any of the following occur:

• the patient fails to show up for the appointment.
• the patient appears more than 10 minutes late for a scheduled appointment.
• the patient calls to cancel an appointment with too little advance notice to allow that appointment time to be rescheduled with another patient (24 hours will be the minimum time necessary to avoid a broken appointment)

Patients who wish to cancel dental appointments must do so a minimum of 24 hours in advance of their scheduled appointment.  If less notice is given without a valid excuse, the appointment will be considered to have been broken.

If a Denplan A, B, C or D patient FTAs or SNCs their “inclusive” examination appointment they must pay to attend for a new examination, or they can delay their examination until the next inclusive one is due.  This is also the case if a Denplan B, C or D patient FTAs or SNCs their inclusive cosmetic clean appointment.

For Hygiene appointments if a patient fails to attend or short notice cancels within 24 hours, they will lose their deposit of £30 and will have to pay another deposit of £30 to rebook their appointment back in with the hygienist.