A new campaign has been launch by dentists in Sheffield to raise awareness of the problems caused by missed dental appointments.
Figures show that around 54,000 appointments are missed each year at dental practices in the city, with the average practice having to deal with 600 missed appointments a year.
Patients are now being urged to ‘keep it or cancel it – just don't forget it' as dentists attempt to highlight the disruption caused by those that fail to attend an appointment.
As part of the campaign, all dental surgeries in Sheffield will receive a 'Failure to Attend' resource pack that will include posters, reminder sticker sheets for patients and a chart for displaying the total number of missed appointments and time wasted for each month.
Richard Taylor, dentist at Taylors Dental Care, revealed that 37 appointments were unattended at the practice last month - amounting to more than 10 hours of the practice's time being wasted.
He said: "As a Sheffield dentist, my colleagues and I are seriously concerned about the impact that patient non-attendance has on our workload."
‘If a patient fails to return for an hour appointment, the dental team – dentist, nurse and receptionist – are totally redundant. If that's not bad enough, the whole team will have to work an extra hour another day to enable the practice to reach their targets."
"In response to this, many dentists send a written reminder to patients, but if they repeat the non-attendance they may not be offered another appointment," Richard added.
Dentists in Britain have reported that more patients are failing to attend their appointments since the introduction of the new dental contract in April 2006, which denied dentists the right to charge patients for missed appointments.
