Missed Appointment Policy

In order to manage our appointment system effectively, it is important that patients attend for their appointments.

Due to the large number of people who make appointments but fail to show up for them or fail to give adequate advance notice when cancelling them, it has become necessary to inform all patients of their responsibility.

Broken and cancelled appointments waste the clinic’s very limited time and hinder other patients who are trying to make an appointment as well as NHS resources.

If a patient has missed 2 appointments, the practice will no longer be seeing that patient.

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 20 minutes late for a scheduled appointment, or
• 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 considered to 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.