Late Arrivals, Late Cancellations and Missed Appointments

The practice’s missed appointment policy is as follows:

So that we can concentrate on caring for our patients who cooperate with our appointment system our policy is to remove NHS patients from our books if they fail to attend or cancel 2 or more appointments without giving the required 24hours notice, if you are a private patient your missed appointment will incur a cancellation charge as opposed to deregistration. We choose to monitor this and take into consideration and record any extenuating circumstances. This policy is in accordance with NHS England guidelines.

Please note that until you have had your first appointment at the practice you are not considered a patient. If you fail to attend or cancel your first appointment with us on the NHS without 24hours notice, we will not be reappointing you. We only have a small children’s contract with the NHS and spaces are in high demand.

Late Arrivals

Whilst every effort is made to see all patients, our practice runs to a very tight schedule. If you arrive significantly late for your allotted time, it will be recorded as a missed appointment and marked as a failed to attend.

Late Cancellations

You should provide us with as much notice as possible if you must change or cancel an appointment. We require, whenever possible, at least 24hours notice. This enables us to reschedule our list and perhaps see someone in need of an emergency treatment or urgent care. If an appointment is cancelled with less than the required 24hours notice it will be marked as a failed to attend.

Missed Appointments

Missing appointments wastes time and resources which are needed for other patients. Missed appointments will be recorded as a failed to attend. If, for any reason, you miss an appointment we may contact you by phone or letter to arrange a new one. However, it is ultimately the responsibility of the patient to ensure a new appointment is arranged.

Dental Appointment Reminders

We want to do everything we can to help you to remember your appointments to ensure waiting times are kept to a minimum and our fees are kept as low as possible.

We offer a free E-mail reminder service to remind you of your appointment that may have been made a long time in advance. The reminder E-mail is sent 3 working days prior to your appointment. Help us to help you; by ensuring we have an up-to-date E-mail address to send your reminders to.

We also offer a courtesy telephone reminder service. We will endeavour to give you a call to remind you of your appointment 2 working days prior to your appointment BUT this may not be possible if we are short staffed so should not be relied upon.