Appointment Confirmations
As a courtesy, we will try to contact you to remind you of your appointment one week in advance. We currently use an automated system which records our attempts to contact you. It will use all of the contact information we have in our system including email, text and voicemail in the order that you specify to us. It is important that you respond to one of these methods. If we do not hear back from you, we will generally try again 48 hours in advance. If we still do not get a response and with so many patients waiting, we can’t hold a spot if we don’t know that you are coming.
In addition, recall notices are sent by mail or email each month for patients that are due or who have a checkup appointment scheduled.
Please understand that we are here to help. We do everything we can to maximize the efficiency of our schedule and work hard to make appointing as convenient as we can. Ultimately, however, you are responsible for the time you reserve with us.
Recall and Preventive Appointments
Because our hygiene schedule is in high demand, particularly for early and late appointments, we highly recommend making your appointment in advance when you are in for your current appointment. Without prescheduling, the wait time can be up to 6 weeks depending on your scheduling preferences. By prescheduling, you ensure that you will get the appointment time that you require.
VIP Same Day Appointments
For those whose schedule changes often (like pilots or independent contract workers) we offer the flexibility of same day scheduling. We reserve time each day for both emergency and same day appointments. We also have changes in our schedule which may open up a time that was previously filled. Call us as early in the morning as you can – these spots are first-come first-serve. If we have an availability, we will prioritize you for that appointment spot. In a similar manner, we offer ‘sooner-if-possible’ appointing for which you are given a set appointment but are added to the call list for when or if an appointment time opens up sooner.
Cancellations and No-Shows
We reserve time especially for you to perform a given procedure and many patients are waiting for care. It is very important that you keep the appointments that you have reserved or provide us the courtesy of enough notice to allow another patient to fill your spot. Without proper notice, our schedule has a ‘hole’ while other patients continue to wait.
If you have continued difficulty in keeping appointments that you have scheduled, we may suggest VIP same day appointments as a more convenient option. For patients that are repeatedly abusive of our appointment time, we may end our professional relationship and ask you to seek care from another office that may better fit your schedule. We do not have a no-show or late cancellation fee.
- While we appreciate that some notice is better than none, messages left outside of our business hours on our answering machine to cancel appointments for the next business day do not give us enough time to fill the void in our schedule.
- We completely understand that emergencies happen both at home and at work. If applicable, please let your manager or supervisor know of your dental appointment well in advance. Your business likely depends on your clients showing up for their meetings. Your colleagues should know that ours does also.
- If you or a family member is sick, please let us know as early in the day as possible.
- Lastly, please understand that our goal is not to be confrontational but rather to maintain a high level of service and convenience for all of our patients. It is our responsibility to minimize your waiting times by ensuring that our schedule is efficient. Disappointments and no-shows prevent us from reaching that goal.