NHS dentists in Sheffield are taking part in a campaign to raise awareness of the problems caused by missed appointments.
Each year, 54,000 appointments are missed at dental practices in the city, with the average practice having 600 missed appointments a year.
The campaign urges patients to "Keep it or cancel it – just don't forget it" in a bid to highlight the disr
uption caused when patients fail to attend. It will involve displaying posters in surgeries, giving patients reminder stickers and using a chart to show the number of missed appointments and time wasted at practices each month.
Richard Taylor, dentist at Taylors Dental Care on Sharrow Vale Road, 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 patients 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 October, Taylors Dental Care had 37 missed appointments, which amounted to over 10 hours of the practice's time.
A spokesman for NHS Sheffield said dentists had found the number of missed appointments had been rising since April 2006, when a dental contract came in which made them unable to charge patients who missed appointments.
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