NHS Missed Appointment and Late Cancellation Policy

Look after your NHS Dentistry place or you may lose it!

Did you know that to keep your NHS dental registration at our practice you need to attend regularly? Many of our patients forget to make regular visits to see their dentist. And then, before they realise, it’s been nearly two years! Due to the high number of people wishing to receive NHS dental treatment and the very long waiting lists, we have no choice but to de-register patients who have not attended for three years or more. We will always try to contact you to offer an appointment before de-registering you, however your dental care is your responsibility to manage. In our practice, we try to remind our patients when they are due for their dental examinations via text message and email. However, we often find that many of our communications get returned as patients do not update their details with us.

What to do to keep your registration

Always attend any appointment booked or cancel the appointment more than 48 hours in advance. Re-book: Make sure you book your next dental examination before you leave the practice. Whether it’s three, six, nine or even twelve months in advance, our reception teams will help you make your next appointment and send you reminders nearer the time as well. Check and update your contact details: Be sure they are correct, especially your email address and mobile phone, if you have one. If we can keep in touch with you, then we can help you keep on track, so you don’t miss your appointment. If you are caring for a patient then help them to keep up their registration too by tracking their appointments for them. If you have not booked an appointment, please contact us to make an appointment at your earliest convenience on 01924 374092.

Your attendance to booked appointments is key!

Once you have an appointment booked it is important that you attend, as your dental health is important to maintain, and these NHS appointments are so highly requested by other patients it is frustrating to waste them. We politely ask you to cancel 48 hours ahead of your appointment time so as we have time to refill your appointment with another NHS patient in need. If you do not cancel with enough notice or miss your appointment entirely, we have the right to put this down as a late cancellation / missed appointment. If this happens you will be given your first warning, and if you late cancel or do not attend another appointment within the following 18 months, we are entitled to remove you from the NHS list. For first appointments, failure to attend or late cancellations will cause your registration to be removed immediately.

Set off with plenty of time!

We are a city centre practice and sometimes the traffic is bad! We request that you set off with enough time to allow for traffic. If you arrive more than 5 minutes late for an appointment, we are entitled to mark it as a missed appointment if the dentist is unable to see you.

Use it! Don’t lose it!

With all this in mind we recommend you book your next appointment before leaving and you give us as much notice as possible if you do need to rearrange. Once you have been deregistered, you are no longer able to receive NHS treatment at our practice as we do not have available capacity. We would still be delighted to see you again on a private basis and if you contact us on 01924 374092, we can get a new patient examination booked in for you. Check out our private prices here: www.toveylittle.co.uk/private-treatment-pricing/

In Summary:

• Always attend your appointments
• Please give us at least 48 hours notice for a cancellation.
• If you late cancel / do not attend twice in 18 months you may not be able to book further appointments.

Appointment amendments by ourselves

Sometimes appointment times and dates may need to be changed for unavoidable reasons. We will make every reasonable effort to give you as much notice as possible. However, our maximum liability will be limited to a refund of the advance payment fee ONLY if a mutually convenient appointment cannot be agreed. Tovey Little will not accept liability for any additional costs or losses incurred by a patient or organisations, which are claimed to have arisen through treatment cancellation. Tovey Little reserves the right to vary arrangements for the delivery of a treatment plan and in such cases will make reasonable efforts to inform patients in advance.

Refund Policy

You may cancel a course of treatment provided you give us a minimum of 48 hours prior notice. If 48 hours prior notice is not received, we reserve the right to withhold your deposit, based upon the length of the appointment, to cover overheads. If a patient is receiving any treatment that involves laboratory work and initial work has been carried out i.e. if the patient is having crowns/bridges or a denture made, and the work has already been started or completed by the laboratory, a proportion of the deposit will be kept to cover the cost of the laboratory invoice. In the event of a deposit not being held, you shall be liable for the full lab fee. We can provide the lab invoice for reference. Refunds will be processed within 14 days after receipt and confirmation of your request/concern.