It is the aim of this practice to provide quality dental care to our patients and to use clinical time effectively. To enable us to accommodate you with the most suitable appointment time, we require your cooperation in understanding our policies on attendance, deposits, payments and timekeeping.
Deposits
When booking your appointments, we may ask for payment in full or a deposit. A minimum deposit of £50 is required to secure a future booked appointment. The practice reserves the right to charge time based deposits for booking future appointments.
- For appointments that are 45 minutes or under, we require a deposit of £50.
- For appointments over 45 minutes and up to 90 minutes, we require a deposit of £100.
- For appointments over 90 minutes, we require a deposit of £150.
It is the combined duration of all future appointments booked that determines the total deposit that will be taken for the patient to secure those appointments.
Deposits are generally deductible off the cost of treatment unless a subsequent future appointment is booked for which a deposit is required. Our deposits are normally fully refundable, providing our cancellation and non-attendance policies are adhered to.
On rare occasions, where by prior agreement, a deposit is not charged to secure the appointment, or a lower deposit is taken to secure the booking, the Practice reserves the right to charge the full deposit if the patient does not attend the appointment or cancels at short notice.
Appointment Reminders
We provide a courtesy appointment reminder service via text message or email. This service is dependent on several factors, including our text & email provider, your mobile/email network provider and your phone, and therefore successful delivery cannot be guaranteed. Text reminders will be sent up to 72 hours before your scheduled appointment. You must inform the practice of any changes to your contact details. Please note that this is a courtesy reminder only. You should not rely on our text/email messages as the sole reminder of your appointment as we will not be responsible for any appointments missed due to non-delivery of the text/email message reminder, regardless of the reasons for its failure.
Cancellation notice
If you are unable to attend your appointment for any reason, to avoid incurring fees, it is important that you inform us no later than 72 hours before the scheduled start time of your appointment. By providing us a minimum of 72 hours notice, we may be able to offer the slot to another patient and minimise loss to our small business.
Cancellation or delay of an appointment by the practice
We will only cancel or delay your appointment in unavoidable circumstances. In such cases, we will take the following steps: If a situation occurs whereby we have to cancel or postpone an appointment, you will be informed as soon as we have been made aware. You will be informed of the reason for the cancellation or delay at the time. Upon rescheduling, we will do our best to accommodate your new appointment at the earliest time available
Late cancellation and non-attendance
Late cancellations and missed appointments represent a significant cost to the practice when other patients could have been seen in the time set aside for the patient. We are a small business with a high cost of overheads and a commitment to paying fair living wages for our staff.
Failure to provide adequate notice for cancelled, rescheduled, or failed appointments will result in a minimum fee of £50 per appointment depending on the duration of the appointment/s booked on a particular day.
- For cancelled or missed appointments that are 45 minutes or under, we charge a fee of £50.
- For cancelled or missed appointments that are over 45 minutes and up to 90 minutes, we charge a fee of £100.
- For cancelled or missed appointments over 90 minutes, we charge a fee of £150.
We aim to contact patients after a missed appointment to understand the reason for non-attendance and to inform them about any fees. We completely understand there may be, on occasion, unforeseen circumstances, and we take into account all valid circumstances.
Non compliance and wasted appointments (orthodontic patients only)
We ask our orthodontic patients to commit to following their treatment plan once treatment has commenced, and attend scheduled appointments to ensure the best results. If a patient declines treatment during a scheduled appointment, we may charge £50 to reduce wasted appointments and lost resources. This fee applies only to orthodontic patients and is at the discretion of the Practice.
Cancellation due to illness
We appreciate that sickness is not planned and cannot be anticipated in advance and therefore cancellations can sometimes be unavoidable. We generally take a sympathetic approach in these circumstances however it is worth noting that we are a small business and there is a significant cost to the clinic when appointments are cancelled at short notice due to the high cost of overheads, loss of clinician’s valuable time and our commitment to paying fair living wages for our staff.
To ensure we treat all our patients fairly, we have a fee waiver request form in place that is emailed to all patients when there is a short notice cancellation. This allows us to audit the cancellations and improve our service. The fee waiver is at the discretion of management however as a general rule, in the case of unforeseen circumstances, the first cancellation fee is waived, the second is discounted by 50% and on the third instance it would be fully charged. Please note, however, that this approach does not apply to appointments that are over 45 minutes in duration and it will be at the discretion of the practice if the fee should be charged, waived or discounted.
It is important to remember that we are health-care providers first and foremost and that actively infectious people do not come in for dental care as this could cause illness or infection to spread. If you are unsure whether you should come in for your appointment, please contact us as soon as possible so that we can ask the right questions and either help you keep your appointment or reschedule your appointment. Please note that you will still be asked to complete the fee waiver request form if you are cancelling/rescheduling with less than 72 hours notice.
If you attend the appointment despite being ill, and if the dentist or hygienist is not comfortable seeing you, they may request you to reschedule your appointment and you may still be charged the short notice cancellation fee. We would never intentionally expose patients to any risk of illness and we expect the same from our patients.
If two or more appointments are missed or cancelled at short notice without payment of the cancellation fee, we reserve the right to cancel any future appointments linked to that patient.
Cancellation due to COVID-19
If you are waiting for the result of a Covid 19 test or are required to go for a test within 72 hours of your scheduled dental appointment, you must cancel your appointment at Sunrise Dental. If you have received a positive Covid test result, you must wait 5 days before you can attend any dental appointments and notify us when completing your pre-appointment paperwork.
Late arrival
We understand that now and then, things don’t work out as planned and that you may run late for an appointment. We allocate the appropriate time for each appointment to ensure patient needs can be fulfilled. If you arrive a few minutes late, we will always do our best to complete the treatment in the allotted appointment time. However, if arriving more than 10 minutes late for your appointment, we may not have enough time to complete the planned treatment especially if the appointment time is 30 minutes or less. In this case, the practitioner will explain to you what can be completed in the allotted time and/or if it would be better to either schedule another appointment or reschedule the appointment. Where the practitioner is unable to carry out any treatment due to the late arrival, we reserve the right to charge the full cancellation fee of £50 to cover our staff costs. Where partial treatment is completed, we reserve the right to charge a Late arrival fee of £25.
Payments
Requesting the records agreements
Requesting dental records will incur admin fees of £35 per request, which must be paid online when submitting the request form.
Promotions and its terms and conditions
From time to time, the practice will advertise various offers and run promotions. Some promotions may have additional terms and conditions but the general terms and conditions of any promotions or offers we run include the following:
- All Promotions Terms and Conditions are supplemented by our Terms of Service and Privacy Policy.
- The practice reserves the right to modify or amend the terms and conditions of any promotion without prior notice.
- It is the patient’s responsibility to inform us that they intend to use the promotion, and request the discount prior to commencing treatment or appointment.
- The Practice requires the eligibility to be proven when availing the University of Edinburgh discount (staff card, email address or payslip) or the egg card discount (coupon code/redemption code). Screenshots or copies will not be accepted.
- Any promotion may not be used in conjunction with other promotions or discounts including POD plan discounts.
- Any promotion is not applicable for orthodontic treatment, i.e. orthodontic treatment is excluded from any promotion/discounts.
- Discounts cannot be applied retrospectively to previous invoices or when treatment/course of treatment has already started. If an estimate has already been signed, discount cannot be applied retrospectively to past appointments or to future appointments within the signed estimate. However discounts can be applied to any new treatment/ estimates that are not already signed and where treatment hasn’t begun.
- Failure to settle invoices before or immediately after appointment will result in non-discounted prices being applied.
- Sibling discounts for paediatric consultations are only available if there is at least one paediatric consultation booked at full price within the family.
- Family generally means partners, children, and parents. The final decision regarding who qualifies as a family member rests with the Practice.
- The Hygiene discount is applicable for appointments that are of 30-minute duration only.
- All promotions are subject to change without notice and we reserve the right to end any promotion at any time.
- All promotions are subject to availability.
