Cancellation and Failure to Attend Policy

We aim to provide all of our patients with the best possible service and to achieve this we need your cooperation.

It is inevitable that sometimes you may need to cancel or rearrange your dental appointments.

In the event of a cancellation, we will endeavour to fill the time allocated to you with another patient. We reserve the right to charge for any time subsequently lost as a result of a late cancellation or failure to attend. Such appointments will be charged at £1 per minute based on appointment length with a minimum charge of £15. 

We would ask patients to give as much notice as possible when cancelling an appointment so we have the opportunity to offer it to someone else although we do understand that during an emergency this is not always possible. Non-attendance and cancellations at short notice without a valid reason deprive other patients of our services.

The first time a patient fails to attend a booked appointment we will send a letter or e-mail reminding them that in future they must cancel appointments if they are unable to attend.

After 2 of failed to attend letters or e-mails we will advise you that we will no longer be able to book further appointments without prior payment to secure the appointment.

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.

Cancellations due to illness

If you are showing symptoms of a stomach bug or a respiratory illness, including COVID, please let us know so we can rearrange your appointment for when you are feeling better. This also helps to keep our staff and other patients safe. The normal cancellation period will not apply in these circumstances.

Appointment Reminders 

At Veriam Dental we send appointment reminders 7 days before and a day before an appointment. Please inform the practice of any changes to your contact details as soon as possible.  

Deposits 

Some treatments require a deposit on booking. These include New patient examinations, advanced dental treatments and lengthy dental treatment. The deposit is taken off the final appointment fee and is refundable if the treatment is cancelled as per our cancellation times noted above.  We may at our discretion hold an appointment time for you without a deposit we will normally agree a timescale or alternative arrangement to pay the deposit and reserve the right to cancel or reallocate your appointment to a different patient if the deposit is not paid in the agreed timescale.