Cancellation of an appointment with less than ‘Two Full Working Days’ notice usually means that we are unable to re-allocate the time to other patients. This leads to lost treatment time, which can then only be covered by increasing charges to our patients.
Efficient Running
Running an efficient appointment system where patients give us notice if they are unable to attend a dental appointment, means we minimise wasted treatment time and can keep waiting lists down.
Minimum Notice – ‘Two Full Working Days’
We aim to be fair to our patients and widely publicise our cancellation policy, which requires two full working day’s notice to cancel or move an appointment. This information is printed on all appointment cards, in our welcome packs and displayed in our waiting area. If you cancel an appointment at shorter notice a charge will be automatically added to your account as outlined in our ‘Late Cancellation & Re-booking policy’ below.
Why Two Working Day’s Notice?
We ask for two working day’s notice to change, cancel or move an appointment as this gives us an opportunity to re-allocate the time to another patient. We also print and prepare day-lists 48 hours in advance, so a cancellation at shorter notice means we need to reprint complete day lists and potentially lose valuable treatment time which along with our staffing costs and overheads still has to be funded.
Late Cancellation & Re-booking
- In the first instance of a late cancellation for an appointment that is 30 minutes or less, we will give you the opportunity to rearrange the appointment and simply pay a fee of £10 to cover administration costs.
- In the second instance of a late cancellation, a charge will be made based on our basic running costs per surgery; this is based on a cost of £2 per minute of appointment duration. Whilst this charge will not fully cover the cost of the lost treatment time it will allow us to pay our team and to partly cover our overheads which help to prevent raising our prices unnecessarily.
- In the third instance of a late cancellation, we reserve the right to charge the full cost of the lost clinical time and to suspend your registration at our practice. Further appointments will then only be bookable after the settlement of your account and full payment made in advance for all future appointments.
Late cancellation charges must be settled within 14 days of the appointment date. Failure to settle these within 14 days will result in a £20 administration charge being automatically added to your account, we may charge interest on monies owing and any subsequent appointments you have may be canceled without notice. We may also ask you to pay in advance for future appointments.
Understanding
We appreciate your understanding of our late cancellation policy in helping to run an efficient appointment system. We will always take exceptional circumstances into account if the unforeseen happens and on a rare occasion, you have the need to cancel an appointment at short notice.
If you wish us to consider exceptional circumstances associated with a late cancellation simply write to us within 7 days of the appointment date, outlining these circumstances and enclosing any supporting evidence. In the meantime, all late cancellation fees must be settled as outlined above for us to consider this and, to prevent you from incurring further charges.
Each case will be considered individually, and we will contact you within 28 days informing you of the outcome if necessary crediting any fees incurred and paid.
