Terms and Conditions of Service

Terms and Conditions of Service can be found below. They are in place to ensure that our service is used and treated fairly and to ensure that all our patients receive a feel-good service every time.

• Appointment Management and Cancellation Policy (NHS and Private)
• Appointment Reminders
• Patient Payments Policy
• Deposits
• Refunds
• Recalls and Lapsed Appointments
• Zero Tolerance

Appointment Management and Cancellations Policy

Cancellation of an appointment or missed appointment by a patient

Patients are required to give at least 24 hours’ notice to cancel a general dental appointment (In Practice or Virtual).
For specialist or long appointment appointments (endodontics, periodontics, Implants or orthodontics, Smile Design or appointments that exceed 1 hour in length), we require at least 48 hours’ notice to cancel an appointment.

Cancellations should be made by telephone on: 0208 175 9400 or by calling your local practice number which can be found Here.

Late cancellations and missed appointments may represent a cost to the practice when other patients could have been seen in the time set aside for the patient.

NHS Appointments:

We do not make a charge for NHS patients for a late cancellations or missed appointments. 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, within a 3-year period, we do not guarantee being able to complete a patient’s NHS treatment or offer them NHS treatment in the future.

It is our aim to telephone or write 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 exceptional circumstances or emergencies and we will take account of all valid circumstances when making our decision.

Any appeals about missed or cancelled appointment decisions by a patient should be made in writing to the Practice Manager at your local practice, it is important to note that the practices decision to uphold will be final.

Private Appointments:

There is a fee for private dental appointments that are missed or cancelled with less than 24 hours’ notice (48 hours’ for specialist dental appointments). The fee is based on the length of the appointment.

Virtual Appointments

We do not charge for a late cancellations or missed virtual appointments. However, we reserve the right to refuse future appointments both virtually and in practice where patients repeatedly fail to provide the appropriate notice.

Patients wishing to rebook a virtual appointment following a failed appointment may be asked to pay a small appointment holding deposit to secure the appointment and may also apply when booking appointments in practice.

Plan Patient Appointments

We do not charge for a late cancellations or missed virtual appointments. However, patients may lose their appointment allocation/appointment allowance where patients repeatedly fail to provide the appropriate notice.

To avoid this we may be asked plan patients to pay a small appointment holding deposit to secure the appointment that will be refunded on completion of the appointment or can be used to towards additional treatment if required.

Reminders

Email reminders are sent 7 days before and Text Message 2 days before an appointment and patients are requested to inform the practice of any changes to their contact details.

Please note that text and Email reminders are sent as a courtesy and these may not be sent/received for reasons out of our control (IT failure, change in mobile number, email addresses etc). Therefore failure to attend, by not receiving a text message or Email, will not be considered a valid exception of our policy.

We will offer a paper appointment card to all patients.
If you are unable to keep your dental appointment, then please call the Practice giving us as much notice as possible inline with our “Cancellation of an appointment or missed appointment Policy” – so that we can offer your time slot to another patient. If less notice is given without a valid reason, the appointment will be considered to have been broken and may incur a charge.

Patient Payment Policy

The practice is committed to providing a high standard of treatment and service to its patients. To achieve this goal it is important that treatment fees are collected efficiently.

All patients are provided with a treatment plan and estimate before the treatment commences which has details of the payment terms and the fees payable for treatment.

To avoid unnecessary costs or inefficiency fees are collected before each treatment plan has been completed, with the fees payable as treatment progresses, with the full balance due before the final appointment.

In the eventuality that fees are outstanding at the end of the treatment plan, the balance is collected at the last visit of the course of treatment.

If there are fees outstanding after the last visit, the practice will write to or telephone the patient to request payment. Reasonable steps will be taken to collect outstanding fees before a third party agent is instructed or legal action is initiated.

If the patient has a complaint about the treatment provided, this is taken very seriously and will be fully taken into account.

Patients can request a detailed procedure for collecting fees is in Patient Accounts and Debt Management by contacting the practice.

Deposits

Deposit paid for appointment booking confirmation will remain in credit on accounts and will be deducted from the treatment value.

We take a minimum of £20 deposit for our hygiene appointments, or payment in full if booking online.

If you have a history of late cancelations or failure to attend (1 or more appointments) we may ask you to pay the full amount before booking your next appointment which will not be refunded if you fail to attend again, or in the case of a virtual appointment a small deposit of £10 to secure the appointment.

Non-refundable deposit cannot be refunded due to payments being made in advance to suppliers, laboratories and other such parties.
When booking your appointment, we will normally seek a deposit from you, payment of which is your confirmation of your commitment to attend your appointment. Our deposits are normally fully refundable providing sufficient notice of cancellation is given (24/48 hours depending on appointment type).

Refunds

Quality Dental Group and its branches will refund the money to patients who wish to discontinue treatment or require a refund. Refunds will be processed either by in the same method as payment when confirmed or via BACs by the second week of each month. It can take up to 10 working days to receive the refund.

Recalls and Lapsed Appointments

Where possible, we will attempt to contact all patients due their routine checkup appointment or Hygiene appointment when they are due within 1 month.

No further reminders will be attempted after a patients fails to rebook after 3 months past due.

For NHS Patients if you fail to maintain regular appointments based on your recall frequency advised by your dentist then you may be at risk of loosing your NHS registration with the practice.

NHS Patients who do not visit the practice for a routine checkup (Excluding Emergency Appointments) within 2 years of their last appointment will be removed from the NHS register, you may be required to be placed on the waiting list if you wish to be seen at the practice on the NHS.

Zero Tolerance

The practice is committed to fulfilling a duty of care to protect staff and other patients and adheres to the NHS zero tolerance policy.

In cases of:

• Unacceptable behaviour, including threatening behaviour, physical abuse, verbal abuse, race, gender or any other form of discrimination or other unreasonable behaviour
• Fraudulent or criminal behaviour, including deliberately obtaining drugs for non-medical reasons, attempting to use the dentist to conceal or aid criminal activity, stealing from practice premises

The practice reserves the right to immediately request the patient vacate the practice if on site or if via phone will be warned that the call will be terminated.

A breach of the Quality Dental Zero Tolerance policy will result in the patient no longer being able to use our services.

 If you require more information then please use the form to contact the practice.