Cancellations and Missed Appointments – Information For Patients

Sixty Six Dental Practice

If you are unable to keep your appointment for any reason, please give us at least 1 working days notice. This allows us to offer the time to someone else who may need it. Less than 1 working day notice will be termed a "short notice cancellation".

When people miss appointments or cancel at short notice, we lose clinical time which increases our costs and therefore our charges. We do not think that this is fair on the vast majority of our patients who do keep their appointments. To try and keep this to a minimum, we charge £5 per 5 minutes of clinical time lost for a missed appointment or short notice cancellation. This fee is not intended to cover our costs, but to act as a deterrent.

When a patient has missed or cancelled at short notice, they will be informed of the fee by telephone, post or email and this will be added to the cost of their next appointment. If we are able to give the appointment time to another patient then there will not be a charge.

If a patient arrives late for an appointment we will try to fit them in around other patients at that time. When arriving more than 10 minutes late, it is unlikely that we can do this and a missed appointment charge may be made.

We understand that life doesn't always run smoothly and there may be exceptional circumstances where you cannot give notice. Please let reception know when this has happened and the fee may be waived at our discretion.