Appointment Policies
Since we provide dental care for children, we strive to offer each patient the optimal experience, which includes scheduling appointments around times that are best-suited for the patient’s age. Children under five-years-old usually have a better experience in the morning after a good night’s rest; if it is in the afternoon, young children will generally be exhausted and have little patience for sitting still after already spending hours in preschool or day care. As such, we tend to schedule our young patients for morning visits, and save afternoon procedures for older patients. We also try to schedule longer procedures for the morning, so that the afternoons will be free to older children who need their dental visit after school hours.
Any child under eighteen years of age must be accompanied by a parent or legal guardian for any appointment. If something comes up so that they are unable to attend, they must pre-authorize someone else to go along with the child.
Courtesy Confirmation
We understand that it can be difficult to keep up with appointments, especially when trying to care for children. Our office will attempt to give you a friendly reminder of your appointment by contacting you via phone, text, or email prior to your scheduled appointment. This reminder will include a confirmation of the day and time of your child’s upcoming visit.
Late Arrivals
When visiting our offices, we may have paperwork that you will need to fill out; please, arrive at least ten minutes early so that you can take care of this necessary information before the start of your child’s appointment. We understand that some days things come up and it maybe impossible for you to arrive on time; however, if you are fifteen-minutes late for your appointment, you may be asked to reschedule, depending on how booked we are for the day. On days when we have additional openings, we maybe able to work you in for a different appointment after taking into consideration those booked ahead.
Canceled or Missed Appointments
When you schedule an appointment with our offices, you are reserving a time slot that could be used by another patient. As such, we expect you to arrive for all your appointments and to be here on time. To be fair to each patient, we have a standard appointment policy which states the following:
Sometimes emergencies and unexpected events arise and it is impossible to keep an appointment. If you find that you need to cancel or reschedule an appointment, please contact our offices at least twenty-four hours in advance, so that we will have adequate time to offer your appointment time to someone else. If you do give our offices twenty-four hours notice of your cancellation, we may choose to charge your account $50.00
If you miss two appointments without giving our offices a twenty-four hour notice, we reserve the right to opt out of providing your child with future dental care.
Our offices reserve the right to determine who is or is not fined, and who will or will not receive treatment after missed appointments. We determine our course of action based on the individual circumstances surrounding the missed appointment. We realize that, sometimes, emergencies happen and parents are unable to give a twenty-four hour cancellation notice. If you find yourself facing an immediate emergency and are unable to make an appointment, please contact our office as soon as possible so that we can work with you to avoid unnecessary fees or termination of a patient’s care.
It’s not fun making rules; however, we whole-heartedly believe that the above policy helps to make working with our office easier for everyone involved.
