Each day at Asheville Smiles Cosmetic & Family Dentistry, every patient is carefully scheduled to allow the necessary time to complete their treatment and provide the quality experience and care we are so proud to give. Unfortunately, we have found, as you probably have, that many offices overbook their schedules expecting that a few patients will not show. We want you to know that we do not run our office this way. It is extremely important to us that every patient receives the personal care and attention they deserve. Our cost of providing quality care increases greatly when people fail to keep scheduled appointments or cancel at the last minute.
Therefore, appropriate advance notice is required if you absolutely cannot keep your appointment. We spend a minimum of 1 hour prior to your appointment verifying your insurance, reviewing your medical history, reviewing your dental history, and preparing adequately to provide you personalized care. This time can be allocated to patients in urgent need of treatment. In this way, we can best serve the needs of ALL of our patients.
Bearing this in mind, we ask for 48 business hours’ notice if your appointment must be changed or canceled. In the event that at least 24 business hour notice is not given, OR if you DO NOT show for your appointment, you will be billed a broken appointment fee of $75 per hour of your scheduled appointment time. For a second offense of breaking our cancellation policy, a $100 missed appointment fee per hour applies. After a second missed appointment, you will be asked to pre-pay your entire appointment in full to reschedule. A third offense of breaking our policy results in a $150 missed appointment fee per hour. After 3 missed appointments or cancelled appointments, we reserve the right to place you on a short call list. A short call list means that we will phone you when an appointment time becomes available on short notice. This gives you the opportunity to know if your busy schedule has an opening for a dental appointment within the next few hours. We reserve the right to keep your credit card on file and charge your credit card if you are non-compliant with our office policy.
Late policy: If you are more than 15 minutes late to your appointment, we reserve the right to not see you. We adequately schedule time for your appointment. If you arrive late, we do not want to rush your procedure and not provide the quality care that is our standard. If you arrive more than 15 minutes late to you appointment, the same missed appointment fees apply as mentioned above.
Our wish is that we never have to charge a patient this fee.
Sometimes, patients do not understand the importance of their appointments. This is a critical aspect of our doctor/patient relationship. Simply put, we need you to keep your appointment. And, as always, if you have any questions or concerns about any aspect of your dental care, we are always available and happy to discuss these with you.
Confirmation System: All scheduled appointments need to be confirmed by the patient at least 3 business days ahead of time. As a courtesy to you, we do the following: 2 business days before your appointment, we will text, e-mail or call to confirm your appointment. It is important that you provide us with all of your most current contact information. It is important for you to respond to one of these means of contact. If we have not heard from you via text or email, we will continue to call each day to try and obtain a solid confirmation. At any time, you would like to opt out of text or email confirmation please notify our office and know you will only receive a phone call reminder.
We appreciate your participation in helping us provide you with the personalized and comfortable care we are proud to offer.