Patient Payment Policy
At Centre of Dental Excellence we are committed to providing a high standard of treatment and service to our patients. To achieve this goal it is important that treatment fees are collected efficiently.
All patients are provided with a treatment plan and estimate before the treatment commences which has details of the payment terms and the fees payable for treatment.
To avoid unnecessary costs or inefficiency, our practice collects pre-payments in full for all consultations at time of booking to secure them.
We also take deposits towards all treatments at time of booking your follow up appointments. if you have booked an appointment for 6 – 12 months time, you will be contacted by our reception team from 3 months up to 1 month prior to you your appointment. These payments can also be done over the phone or via bank transfer for larger amounts for your convenience.
However, if you are having orthodontic treatment, you may have a pre agreed payment plan created by Dr Patel/Dr Shah and Stacy (practice manager). We would then contact you monthly to collect the agreed fee. Failure to comply with this agreement could result in the balance to be collected in full for treatment.
No patient card details are kept on file under any circumstances.
Reasons Centre of Dental Excellence operates by this policy is:
- To ensure we do not get last minute cancellations or no-shows with our specialists team.
- Our consultation appointments are tailored to ensure sufficient time (between 30 to 60 minutes) is allocated to patients to address their concerns and carry out a detailed clinical assessment. On occasions where patients have failed to attend an appointment, this increases our inefficiencies as a service and results in an increased waiting time to see other referred patients who could have been seen in this time slot instead.
- To provide a fair, efficient service to all our patients and referring dentists.
In the eventuality that fees are outstanding at the end of the treatment plan, the balance is collected at the last visit of the course of treatment.
If there are fees outstanding after the last visit, the practice will write to or telephone the patient to request payment. Reasonable steps will be taken to collect outstanding fees before a third party agent is instructed or legal action is initiated.
If the patient has a complaint about the treatment provided, this is taken very seriously and will be fully taken into account.
The detailed procedure for collecting fees is in Patient Accounts and Debt Management (1.9)
