Just had my dentist appt cancelled with <2hrs notice

[SteakBakesAndHotTakes]

I've booked the time off and just got a text. This is now the second time they have done this. Why do patients get removed from the dental register if they cancel with less than 24hrs notice but this is acceptable?

I would assume the dentist has called in sick, which although inconvenient is just part of life, humans are not perfect.

Yes, but if OP did that she would no longer be welcome at the surgery.

So why is she not also able to be sick, which is just part of life?

OP, I’ve also thought this many times.

I don’t know of any dentist that would remove you for cancelling once due to sickness.

This has been the pattern at our dentist for the last 2 years.

Book appointment, they cancel it, rebook, they cancel it.

They claim to accept NHS patients, but clearly don't want them. Having read some threads on NHS patients costing the dental practice, I can understand why but it's not helping our deteriorating dental issues.

OP says it happens at her surgery.

I have never been late or missed an appointment, but every time I book they warn me to cancel with notice or I will be deregistered. And when I do get an appointment I have waited for up to two hours past my appointment time

Just looked at my surgery website, cancelling with under 48 hours notice means you get no more NHS appointments offered. It doesn’t matter how long you’ve been with them.

We once had dental appointments cancelled less than five minutes before it was due to start. DC were getting their checkups: DC1 has autism and learning difficulties and has never been very good at sitting and waiting… We always have to time it so that his waiting time is minimal. We were sat at the traffic lights about one minute away from the surgery when I get a call to say that the dentist is off sick. I mean, surely they had worked out earlier that he wasn’t coming in? We had travelled 30 minutes to get there as well. We also had incidences of the dentist just turning up late… We would always ask for the first appointment of the day so that DS didn’t have to wait. We would be sitting there, 9 o’clock in the morning, and the dentist would stroll in at 10 past. Never any apology. I think they know that they have you over a barrel to a degree, as dentists are so difficult to get registered with.

Mine also states you must still pay the full fee if you cancel it on the same day.

And if you cancelled they'd try to charge you for the appointment, but they don't pay you when they cancel!

I always think these rules are fundamentally imbalanced but someone is bound to be along to tell me that these are poor hard done by businesses and consumers can afford to take the hit.

To be fair to my dentist, I did miss an appointment earlier this year when I had the wrong day in my head and they phoned, made me a new one a couple of days later and didn't charge me for the missed one.

Mine would

This was the norm at my previous dentist. I had appointments cancelled more often than I got to see the dentist, often at short notice. It started after they were bought out by a large company who seem to have bought into all the small dentists around here. I assume they were trying to drive out their NHS patients and increase their private ones. Although that's purely speculation on my part.
I left them about 2 years ago when I got totally sick of it. We are lucky in this area that there are other NHS dentists available and they fortunately offer a better service.
Funnily enough, I had a text from them recently asking if I needed to reregister as a patient as they had NHS slots available. I wonder why???

It does happen. How many dentists do you attend to making you think you have national data?

It wasn’t MyDentist, was it? They bought out all the local dentists to us. They had such a high turnover of staff that you never saw the same person twice, meaning there was no continuity of care. Some of them were perfectly nice, but some of them couldn’t have cared less.

No, Roddericks. But sounds similar.

Do dentists have to spend some time working for the nhs after qualifying? Or can they go private immediately?

Currently they can go straight into private practice but that is about to change

Ours definitely takes you off the list if you miss an appointment for any reason at all.

Like a previous poster, our dentist gives you an appointment and then cancels it then gives you another one. They can’t get any dentists.

Because it's exceedingly rare that a dentist has to cancel patients with a few hours notice, but exceedingly common that patients don't show up. A good dental clinic makes a turnover of £2-4K per hour so they never cancel appointments lightly. They're essentially forgoing that sum just to skip a few patients so there must be a genuine emergency involved. They take into account that they might lose patients but something like this only happens 2-3 times a year on average.

In contrast, patients don't lose anything by not turning up . Most of the time, they just can't be arsed, have forgotten or are too scared. All of that also costs the dentist the same amount of money but it happens on a far more regular basis, usually daily. That's why all the warnings and consequences are needed.

My last one got cancelled by text earlier in the morning of the appointment. My lovely dentist treats emergencies over routine checkups. As I'd expect him to do his best to see me if I urgently needed him then I wasn't cross.

I am brutally aware he'll retire in the next 10 years perhaps and then I will have to find another one I can trust.

Boo hoo

I had one cancelled on the day due to a power cut. They said they would prioritise everyone who was cancelled that day with a new appointment. I was offered one 8 months later.
I was then removed from their list for being too long between appointments. NHS dentistry is like the wild west.

Did this comment make you feel really good about yourself?

Its the reality of any tight appointment based service

Im not actually dentist but work in a nhs based service, where we often run over, cancel appts last minute etc. All of the spare excess in the system is being trimmed, for example I would often have a buffer between some appointments that would limit the knock on effect of a patient taking longer than anticipated, and would be able to book a 25 min appt in a 30 min slot to give flex. That's all gone so the second I run over its a cascade of issues and often the slot times arent sufficient to do the actual work in practicality.

This is especially true in things like dentistry when non clinicians, contractors and payment by slots, all are used to determine the most that can be fit in a day which often massively under estimates admin time for tasks.

Our admin are now only funded to work the surgery opening times, we used to have admin that started earlier than the slots so if I called in sick, the first slot of the day could be at least cancelled with 30 to spare, now it gets cancelled at 9 when I (and the admin) starts and the patient is probably due in.

Equally the number of spare slots is slim (and you are under significant pressure to be fully booked, and not be operating under 95% capacity). When for example my car broke down on a way to an appt, I knew that the patients house who i was already meant to be at would be rebooked in a terrible time frame because I simply dont have slots. I booked her in a very urgent slot, was told off as she wasn't urgent and then had an actual emergency that I sent to a+e because I couldn't do it. The rest of the patients cancelled on that day waited about 6 months

Theres limited spare capacity so an unexpected call, a broken bit of machinery, child going home sick from school in the middle of the day all can tip a mundane day into cancellations past appointment times and big delays.

Unless people are happy to campaign for funding for spare clinicians to cover unforseen events and for slack in the system then it will continue