MK Dental Practice Patient Attendance Policy
New NHS Patients
If you are attending as a New patient (never been seen at MK Dental Practice) and either fail to attend or cancel at short notice (within 24 hours), unfortunately we are unable to offer to rebook your appointment as an NHS patient.
Existing NHS Patients
If you have been seen at MK Dental practice previously for an examination or treatment and persistently cancel, reschedule, or fail to attend twice within a 12-month period, unfortunately we are unable to keep you on our books.
We will automatically make your patient profile inactive. Due to the number of active patients that we have, we are not able to inform you of this personally.
Attending recall appointments
After your initial examination and subsequent course of treatment if needed, you will be recommended a regular check-up.
These recalls will be patient specific and can be either every 3 months, 6 months, 9 months, 12 months, 18 months or 2 years.
The recall interval is based on your individual risk factors.
It is important that you try and attend your regular recall appointments for various reasons:
- To ensure our dentists can provide regular examinations to identify potential problems and to treat any problems before they escalate and get worse
- To ensure we keep the government/NHS funding and not risk losing this funding for our NHS patients
- To ensure clinical time can be maximised as best as possible to treat as many patients as we possibly can
If you fail to book your routine examination at the appropriate interval and are not seen within 15 months of your last appointment, unfortunately you will be considered a poor attender and your patient profile will automatically be made inactive.
As a result, you will no longer be able to access NHS dental services at MK Dental practice.
This is to ensure clinical time can be offered to other patients who are in need of examinations and treatment.
You can of course join an alternative NHS or private practice for an examination or treatment if required.
