Cancellation Policy | Church Street Dentist Bilston

Private/Denplan/NHS Appointment Management and Cancellation Policy

At Church Street Dental Practice we pride ourselves on providing high quality dental care to our patients. We believe the time spent with each patient for their care is invaluable. Due to the high demand for appointments, if patients cancel at short notice or fail to attend we will now be charging for the missed time.

Patients are required to give at least 24 hours’ notice to cancel a dental appointment. Cancellations should be made by telephone on: 01902 491539

Charges for Missed Private/Hygienist appointments or Late Arrivals

There is a fee for private dental appointments that are missed or cancelled with less than 24 hours’ notice. The fee is the deposit that was paid to book and secure the appointment time for further treatment. Please be aware that if you arrive late for your appointment and the dentist is unable to see you, this would be considered as a missed appointment and the above procedure regarding charges would be applied.

Late arrivals, short notice cancellations or missed Hygiene appointment fees are charged the full appointment value. The reason for this is that we do have a long waiting list to see our Hygienist and wasted clinical time is unacceptable.

Our Denplan patients are treated in line with our private patients inrespect of missed and cancelled appointments. ***Please see your denplan information booklet section 10 of the terms and conditions ***

We request that patients inform the practice of any changes to their contact details (address, telephone number, email address) as soon as possible.

We understand that cancellations are sometimes unavoidable due to illness or emergencies and we will take account of all valid circumstances. We will only cancel or delay a patient’s appointment in unavoidable circumstances and the patient will be offered a new appointment at the earliest time available.

Any appeals about missed or late cancelled appointment decisions by a patient should be made in writing to Tracey Wigley, Reception Manager.

Deposits and Advance Payments for Private Appointments

Deposits are required at the time of booking any further private appointments. The amount of deposit will be based on the type of treatment and length of the appointment. A typical deposit will be 50% of treatment due to be completed . A member of our reception team will discuss this with you at the time of booking. All appointments booked with our Dental Hygienists are to be paid in full at the time of booking

NHS Appointments

We do not make a charge for NHS patients for a late cancellation or missed appointment. However, we reserve the right to ask a patient to find another dental practice if they continue to miss appointments.

If more than two NHS dental appointments are missed or cancelled with less than 24 hours’ notice, we do not guarantee being able to complete a patient’s NHS treatment or offer them NHS treatment at our practice in the future.

It is our aim to contact our to patients after a missed appointment to understand the reason for non-attendance and to inform them about any fee or decision about their NHS dental care. We understand that cancellations are sometimes unavoidable due to illness or emergencies and we will take account of all valid circumstances.

In order to keep your NHS dental registration at our practice you need to attend regularly.

Many patients forget to make regular visits to see their dentist.

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 two years or more.

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.

Our recommendation is that you protect your registered status by attending your appointments, and booking your next appointment before you leave the practice.

Check list for staying on the NHS dental register: