What is an appropriate fee for a missed appointment?

Sunday, May 9th, 2010

This week, I was reading an article in the newspaper about a patient that was charged $400 for a missed dental appointment.  The author of the article was incensed at the fee and felt that people should not be charged for a missed appointment.  Before I go on, I am going to tell you that I think it is necessary to charge when someone misses an appointment if just for a deterrent for people to just not show up!.  If a patient has a good history and has not missed in the past and they have a good excuse,  I will wave the charge.  Now, concerning the $400 charge.  Is it fair?  At first thought, I had to agree with the author, but, as I thought about it, I couldn’t fault the practice.  Dentistry has a very high overhead.  Maybe, $400 was the hourly overhead of this practice and most patients don’t consider the huge impact that missing an appointment has on the productivity of the day.  When you consider that there is no production for that time and the overhead is still the same, depending on what the procedure is for, could cost the practice $1000 to $1500.  It wa a fair fee!

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