prepaid dentist, missed appointment been charged for the whole amount

rule

Hi guys an update for this to let you know that I have received back half of the money


Thanks for all the help

pendulum

Thanks for the update, half back seems reasonable enough (although £100 for the dentist to sit and read the paper is good work if you can get it!).

brook2jack

Actually no. A room in a dental surgery costs from £120 to over £200 an hour to run. The dentist may very well have lost money as it would be unlikely someone else could be fitted into the slot. If people don't turn up the expenses, wages,equipment etc still has to be paid for .

upsadaisy

Well perhaps I should start charging my dentist because she is never on time! I have seen her walk into the surgery 1/2 hour after it opened.

rule

haha upsadaisy

unholyangel

brook2jack wrote: »

Actually no. A room in a dental surgery costs from £120 to over £200 an hour to run. The dentist may very well have lost money as it would be unlikely someone else could be fitted into the slot. If people don't turn up the expenses, wages,equipment etc still has to be paid for .

But in contract law, you are only responsible for costs that your breach actually incurred and the other party has a duty to mitigate their losses.........not for overheads incurred during their appointment time.

What it costs to run a room in a dental surgery will vary a lot more than £120-£200 and in fact at least one practice close to me costs significantly less than this.

Next you'll be pulling the "dentists are poor" card =/

brook2jack

The point was that that the amount paid would not have covered the costs of the surgery for the time missed. Overheads in the average practice are roughly two thirds of the gross (more if the dentist doesn't own the practice like 70% of all dentists).
So a person who misses an appointment and pays half the cost will in all likelihood not have paid the dentist to read a newspaper as a previous poster indicated but still will have incurred a cost to the practice and very well may still be a loss overall.
Failing to keep appointments is an increasing problem particularly since the NHS in England and Wales stopped dentists being able to charge for failed nhs appointments ,a situation that may change soon due to the rocketing rates of failed appointments.
It is a sad state of affairs that the habit of not keeping or notifying if you can't keep appointments is an increasing problem not only in dentists,hospitals doctors but in businesses in general such as restaurants ,hairdressers etc. The only way to stop the problem and we've tried it all phone calls,texts etc is to charge for the time.
Interestingly research has shown by far the worst offenders are young men 18 to 25.

Toothsmith

unholyangel wrote: »

What it costs to run a room in a dental surgery will vary a lot more than £120-£200 and in fact at least one practice close to me costs significantly less than this.

I would like to see the back of the fag packet you worked this one out on.

pendulum

brook2jack wrote: »

The point was that that the amount paid would not have covered the costs of the surgery for the time missed.

Missing the appointment is the same as not making it in the first place if nobody else would have taken that slot (do we know the practice was fully booked?). Even if there was someone who wanted that slot, the chances are they will book for another day or time that is free, so that revenue is not lost. It's only actually cost the dentist anything at all if the practice genuinely is fully booked for well in to the future and working at near to 100% efficiency, and if that was the case, the dentist has kept £100 for effectively a double lunchbreak, so he's still not done badly at all.

brook2jack

For every minute that someone is not in the chair the practice loses money and that includes lunchtimes.

A dentist would be very nervous if they saw an appointment book with gaps in it a few days or in some cases a few weeks ahead. The only gaps you leave to be booked on the day are toothache spaces of in most cases a half hour morning and afternoon.

The vast majority of dentists sit down in the surgery at the start of the session and won't leave until the end. That's why it's difficult to speak to them on the phone during the working day as there is literally often no free time during the working day.

That's why it is so important to ring well in advance to cancel appointments, it allows someone else to be booked into the space because most surgeries won't have any other spare time in the day.

You talk about an extra long lunch for the dentist but there is no free lunch , the bills still have to be paid ,the instruments resterilised the bills paid for the time of the missed appointment. Whether there a dentist is working or not their room is costing £120 to £200 an hour to run, a hygienists room £90 an hour. The more people who don't let the dentist or whatever small business involved they won't be coming the more it will cost the people who do turn up because the money to run the business has to come from somewhere.

Where there are no charges for failing to turn up , like in the NHS dental service 40% of new patients don't turn up. So either a dentist goes bust or double or triple books people in leading to large delays when people do turn up.

Isn't it just fairer to charge those people who don't phone to cancel appointments rather than make other people pay for their mistakes?