Failure to Attend Policy

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Persistent Missed Appointments 

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At our practice we will endeavour to manage our appointments system to minimise loss of surgery time due to Late Cancellations and Failed appointments. 

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We will: 

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Take a proactive approach to managing our appointments system to optimise attendance. This might include: 

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• Stressing to patients in advance the importance of attendance for appointments 
• Requiring patients to provide 48 hours’ notice for cancellations or appointment date change. 
• advance deposit for appointments 
• SMS reminders 48hrs prior to the appointment (although not guaranteed) 
• providing as much notice as possible if appointments have to be changed or cancelled 

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As a practice who offer both NHS and private dentistry, we have a long waiting list of patients requiring treatment, and therefore, in order to minimise the amount of appointments missed by our patients we have implemented the following policy for all of our patients: 

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NHS Appointments 

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Any patient who fails to attend three appointments or more will not be accepted for further treatment under the NHS at this Practice. This includes patients who arrive too late to be seen or cancel at short notice (late cancellations). If patients arrive more than 10 minutes late for a scheduled appointment, the dentist, therapist or hygienist may not be able to see you. This is because we run to a tight appointment book, and if we do not have long enough to complete the planned treatment. It may be advisable to reschedule the appointment, to ensure the treatment can be provided as planned. 

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Private Appointments 

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Any private appointments and failure to attend them (including late cancellations) without giving us 48 hours’ notice will be charged a rate of £1.50 per minute for the duration of the appointment or a minimum charge of £40, whichever is greater. For e.g. 60 mins appointment will incur FTA charge of £90. No appointments can be made until the failure to attend fee has been paid. Once payment has been made in full, the patient may then book further appointment(s). 

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Denplan Appointments 

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Any Denplan patients who fail to attend their appointment will not be able to rebook the missed appointment, instead this appointment will be deducted from their plan allowance. For missed hygiene appointments, the patient may decide to pay the missed failure to attend fee or lose their allowance for that appointment this will be at the manager’s discretion.