TERMS AND CONDITIONS OF USE
Thank you for choosing Leicestershire Dental Studio, and for taking the time to read our Terms and Conditions. You have an obligation to read and understand our Terms and Conditions, to read and understand your Treatment Plan, and our Privacy Policy, prior to consenting to undergo any Treatment. We require certain information prior to Treatment being proposed or completed, and any personal information will be processed and protected in line with our Privacy Policy. This can include but is not limited to, your contact details, your detailed medical history.
Leicestershire Dental Studio is the trading name of Smile and Implant Limited, a private limited company registered in England, with company number 09336447, providing dental practice activities. You can contact us by telephone on 0116 254 1298, by letter at 28 Narborough Road, Leicester, LE3 0BQ, or by email at info@leicestershiredentalstudio.co.uk. If we have to contact you, then we will do so by telephone or email using the details you provided to us.
A contract comes into existence between you and us when we confirm we are able to and happy to book you for a consultation and/or offer you a Treatment. We will, via your Practitioner, provide you with a Treatment Plan which will outline the Treatment proposed and the associated Fees. We have a list of rough fees available to view on our website (or printed at request), but Treatment Fees are determined by the Treating Practitioner at the time of consultation based on your individual clinical situation. No two patients are the same.
In order to provide you with the Agreed Treatment, we will:
I. Provide suitable facilities for the provision of Treatment
II. Provide you via your Practitioner information that can be reasonably expected as necessary to allow you to understand the Treatment proposed, the Benefits of this Treatment, the Risks of this Treatment, the Alternatives to this Treatment, and the Risks in deciding to not do this Treatment. We will also provide you with the Fees associated with treatment. We will ensure we are satisfied that you have received this information, have been able to understand the Treatment, Reasons, Risks, Benefits, Alternatives, and Risk of No Treatment; this allows you to properly consent to Treatmentshould you wish to proceed.
III. If our ability to provide the Treatment at a specified time is affected by an event outside our control, we will contact you as soon as possible to let you know, and we will take effective steps to minimise the effect of the delay. We are unable to accept liability for any events that occur outside our control. Events outside our control may include, but are not limited to: Power Failure, Riots, Terrorist Activity, Fire, Flood, Natural Disaster, Pandemic, Worker Strikes (e.g. Postal.)
IV. Treatment Plans will always be subject to change, depending on factors including but not limited to your dental health, your oral hygiene, your social factors, your medical health, external factors including trauma and damage. When we identify that your agreed Treatment Plan requires adaptation due to changing circumstance we will always inform you of this. Any further additional Treatment, which you accept to have will be similarly given in a New Treatment Plan, as above. The requirement of further treatment does not constitute termination of any previously agreed Treatment Plans, unless clearly specified by us in writing.
V. Further to point III, we ask that you keep it in mind that we are providing a high quality health service to patients, and therefore a patients appointment may run late due to unforeseen clinical circumstances or scenarios. We will always keep you updated, as soon as it becomes known of any delays that may affect the start time of your appointment, and we will always endeavour to ensure that our appointments run on time. However, if there are delays outside our control, we apologise for any inconvenience this may cause to you in advance. We can not unfortunately be held liable for any delays to your appointment times, and therefore treatment time, due to unforeseen clinical circumstances in the clinic. We can not be responsible for costs including but not limited to: taking time off work, travel costs, sustenance costs, parking costs.
We have a duty to provide you with the best quality standard of care and customer service. Your dental care will always be led and be delivered by fully qualified dental professionals (“Practitioners”), who are all registered with the General Dental Council. This includes but is not limited to Principal Dentists, Associate Dentists, Specialists, Hygienists, Therapists. The ultimate responsibility of care lies with the treating clinician, as they are a self employed Practitioner, however we work with and alongside your Practitioners in order to assist them in delivering the best quality of care.
We are a Private Dental Practice, and we are only able to accept Self-Pay patients. For the avoidance of doubt we do not have an NHS contract so are ineligible for NHS funding, and are therefore unable to provide any treatment under the NHS.
We accept cash, debit and credit cards, and direct BACs bank transfers. Finance options are available, including a 0% interest finance option up to 12 months. Finance options are available via our reputable finance company Tabeo, and representative examples are available on our website.
When booking an initial consultation or examination or hygienist visit, you will be required to pay the full amount due for this appointment prior to the booking being confirmed. This payment is fully refundable should you decide to change your mind about attending this appointment, provided that you give us at least 48 hours notice of such cancellation. Should you fail to provide us with at least 48 hours notice, this payment is not refundable, and the appointment will not be rebooked without a new payment.
When provided with a comprehensive treatment plan, if you decide to go ahead with treatment you are required to pay the full amount shown on the treatment plan prior to your appointments being confirmed. All treatment plans, although itemised by individual treatment for your convenience, are a collective plan to be seen as a single Course of Treatment, and therefore must be paid in full prior to the first appointment being booked and confirmed.
We provide high quality dental health care to our patients, and therefore we ask you to appreciate that we may see more than one patient in a day. When you book an appointment in the clinic, we have provided considerable resource to facilitate the appointment specific to your needs.
If you have to cancel your appointment, and need to rearrange, we require at least 48 hours notice. There is no charge to cancel and rearrange, given that you provide us with at least 48 hours notice. However, we reserve the right to change this policy on an individual basis if you have multiple occurrences of cancellation. If you cancel more than once, with required notice, we reserve the right to give you notice by email that
any further cancellations for a specified time period, irrespective of notice will be treated as a Late Cancellations.
If you provide less than 48 hours notice, this will be treated as a Late Cancellation. If you fail to attend your appointment with us without any prior notice, this will be treated as a Failure to Attend. Both Late Cancellations and Failure to Attends are considered asequals. If you are a Late Cancellation or a Failure to Attend, we reserve the right to charge through the value of what would have been needed to provide you with your treatment for that appointment, including but not limited to the Practitioners time, Staff time, Laboratory Costs, the Fee for the treatment expected. We also reserve the right to charge through any further costs that we will have to incur as a knock-on effect of you failing to attend this appointment. The total late cancellation/failure to attend fee charged through at each occurrence will be capped at the total value of your Treatment Plan. We will notify you of your Late Cancellation (or Failure to attend) by either Phone or Email, and we will confirm the Cancellation Charge that has been applied to your account. In order to reorganise and confirm your next appointments, we will need you to clear this balance.
In extenuating circumstances, you can write to our Management team at manager@leicestershiredentalstudio.co.uk , and your individual situation will be referred for assessment by Management for consideration. We will respond to your with our investigation and our determination with respect to Cancellation (Or FTA) fees. We will aim to conclude any investigation and provide you with a determination within 7 working days, but will inform you if this is likely to take longer.
If you do not want to delay further treatment until Management have made a decision, we will require the Cancellation (or FTA) Fee to be cleared so that treatment can continue, until such time that a decision has been made. If Management has been able to reverse the Cancellation (or FTA) Fee, then a refund can be made to You.
All patient visits are booked by prior appointment only, and therefore we have implemented a managed appointment diary system. It is imperative that you plan accordingly to ensure that you attend your scheduled appointment at the correct time. If you attend late to your appointment, then we will check with the treating Practitioner if they are still able to see you, and deliver on the quality of care that you reasonably expect. If they can not see you, then we will need to rebook your appointment. Lateness to appointments operates on a two strike policy. If you are late to your appointment for the first time, and you can’t be seen, then we will rebook your appointments (including following appointments) without charge. However, any further late attendances will be treated with the same policy as late cancellations/fail to attend.
If you change your mind about treatment after confirming it you have the right to terminate your contract with us. There are two scenarios:
1. If you have not yet had any appointment after your consultation and agreement of your treatment.
Assuming you provide us with at least 48 hours notice of cancellation before any booked and confirmed appointments, we will cancel your treatment plan, and aim to refund the Fees paid. If you fail to provide us with more than 48 hours of your cancellation request, then this will be treated as a Late Cancellation/Failure to Attend.
However if any preparatory work has been completed by us or your Dental Practitioner in relation to your treatment (which can include but is not limited to: advanced planning, smile design, laboratory prescriptions, multidisciplinary planning with other Practitioners and labwork, scans), then you will not be eligible for a full refund of your Fees. This is considered on an individual basis depending on the Treatment Plan, and we will provide you in writing with any refunds that are due, and their value. However, we reserve the right to retain up to 100% of the Fees paid.
2. If you have commenced your course of treatment and had at least one appointment.
A course of treatment, once started, means that you will not be eligible for a full refund of your fees. This is similarly because there are costs associated with your entire treatment plan, as described above. We will, on an individual basis assess this, and be able to advise whether a refund, if any, is due. We may also request that if a refund is due, that you sign a document to say that you are cancelling treatment mid-way through, and that we can therefore accept no responsibility for treatment failure. If your contract is terminated prior to the full course of treatment being completed then this also voids any warranties or guarantees that you are eligible for.
We reserve the right to charge interest if it becomes apparent that you have underpaid for the agreed treatment. It is your responsibility to ensure that you have paid fully for all treatment, and not ours. If the full payment has not been received, we may charge interest to you on the overdue payment at the rate of 3% a year above the base lending rate. This interest shall accrue on a daily basis from the date due until the date of actual payment of the overdue amount, whether before or after judgement. Your must pay us interest together with any overdue amount. Of course, if we notice that you have underpaid for treatment, we will put this in writing with a specified timeframe to clear the balance due. However if you do not clear the balance, or have an agreed plan with us to clear the balance, then we will revert to applying interest from the date the Treatment Plan payment was initially due, as described previously.
If we believe that you have accidentally overpaid for treatment provided, then you must contact our Management team in writing at manager@leicestershiredentalstudio.co.uk . We will check this with our accounting team, and will confirm if we agree that you have over paid. If you have over paid for treatment, we will provide you with a refund of the difference and this will be paid to you either by refunding to the credit/debit card used for payment, or by agreed BACs transfer. We aim to process all agreed refunds within 14 working days of being signed off by a manager, but this is often completed on the same day. We are not liable and will not be liable in any case for any interest payments that you may wish to claim on the overpayment. If we disagree that you have overpaid, we will provide you with the documentary evidence to show this, and will always work with you to ensure your understanding.
All of our representatives and employees work very hard to provide you with high quality healthcare. We promise to always show you respect and to treat you with kindness. We therefore expect that same level of respect and kindness to be shown by You to our representatives and employees.
We will not tolerate any threatening behaviour from You, or any of your representatives. This can include but not be limited to: abusive verbal language, abusive written communications, abusive phone calls, threats or threatening behaviour, physical and emotional violence. We will also not tolerate any libellous claims about us or our representatives whether it be verbally, written, online or other.
If you breach this relationship, we will act to protect ourselves and our representatives/employees. We will where required inform the Police and report any of the above, and when required we will always press charges especially for threatening and violent behaviour. We will also reserve our rights to take legal action for you or any and all damages that occur as a result of your behaviour.
We will also terminate any Contracts we have with you with immediate effect, and you will be informed you are no longer authorised to enter our private property. Any further entry will be considered trespass and the Police will be called. When we terminate your treatment we will also charge through all Fees paid for your treatment, and you will be ineligible to receive any refund or part/refund of the Fees paid.
We want our service to meet your expectations. If you have a concern or complaint about any aspect of our service, we want to know. Our aim is to identify potential issues in service delivery, resolve them, learn from them, and implement improvements. All feedback is taken very seriously, and we will deal with complaints as courteously and promptly as possible. If you wish to make a complaint please contact our Practice Manager. You can do this by phone, email, or by letter using the contact details in the About Us section. Your complaint will be acknowledged, and you will also be provided with a full copy of our Code of Practice for Complaints. We will follow the Code of Practice for dealing with your complaint. A copy of this is also available at any time, either publicly available on our website, or electronically/printed upon request.
Above all, our sole purpose for existing is to provide our patients with the best quality of precision care in dentistry. We are truly grateful that you have chosen and trusted us to provide your dental care, and we genuinely strive to deliver on the high expectations that we want you to have. We welcome all feedback, and we look forward to looking after you in the practice
