Appointments Policy

Here at Glumangate Dental Practice we aim to ensure we see our patients when they are in need and provide them with the best service possible. In order to achieve this we also need cooperation from our patients.

Emergency Appointments

If you are registered at our practice and require an emergency appointment, please contact us as early as possible in the morning and we promise to make every effort possible to see you on the same day.

Late Attendance

If you think you are going to be late to your appointment, please telephone the practice and we will do our best to either reschedule your appointment to a later time that day or speak with our dentists to see if something can be arranged so that you don’t miss out on your appointment.

We will always try our best to see patients who are running late but sometimes it may not be possible if the dentist is extremely busy so calling the practice will give the receptionists time to try and sort something out for you.

Cancelling at Short Notice

If you are unable to keep your appointment, please make every effort to cancel it in advance so that it may be offered to someone else. Non-attendance and cancellations at short notice without a valid reason deprives other patients of essential dental care.

If you cancel your appointment more than 24 hours before the appointment time, we will mark the appointment as cancelled. If you cancel your appointment less than 24 hours before the appointment time we will mark the appointment as a short notice cancellation.

If you cancel an appointment at short notice twice consecutively, or three times within a year, then we regretfully won’t be able to offer any further appointments.

Failure to Attend

If you fail to attend two appointments consecutively, or three appointments within a year, then we regretfully won’t be able to offer any further appointments.

If you are a new patient and you fail to attend your first appointment with us then we won’t be able to offer any further appointments.

Fees

We regret having to charge fees, however, we have recently experienced a significant amount of wasted surgery time.

We understand that unforeseen circumstances do happen and we will take valid reasons into account.

Our team’s time is set aside exclusively for our patients during their appointment time. However, there are significant costs to running a dental surgery. We therefore have to pass the cost of wasted surgery time to patients if they fail to attend their appointment, or if they cancel with less than 24 hours’ notice.

The payable fee is £1 per minute of appointment (£15 for 15 minute appointment, £30 for 30 minute appointment, etc). This fee is payable before another appointment is booked.

Oral Surgery Service

For patients who have been referred to our practice under the NHS Oral Surgery Service;

If you cancel twice (whether at short notice or not) then you will be discharged back to your dentist who will have to refer you again.

If you fail to attend once then you will be discharged back to your dentist who will have to refer you again.

If you fail to attend twice then we won’t be able to offer you any further appointments at our practice.