Dental Care Attendance Hit By Severe Weather Conditions

Tue, 26 Jan 2010

Thousands of dental patients across the country missed appointments with their dentist earlier this month due to the heavy snowfall that affected most of the UK, it has been revealed.

An online survey, conducted last week by practice management software company Software of Excellence, found that almost 75 per cent of dental practices reported an increase in patients missing out on appointments in the first two weeks of January, due to the severe wintry weather.

Of these, three-quarters reported ‘fail to attends’ (FTAs) of between 9 per cent and 40 per cent.

According to the research, most of the practices polled managed to open during the period, while those that were forced to close did so for anything from half a day to three days.

There is now a growing fear among dentists that dental patients will use bad weather as a further excuse to neglect routine dental care .

Brian Weatherly, managing director at Software of Excellence, said: "The impact of the bad weather was a quite shocking. Although we knew it would have affected practices we weren't clear as to the extent."

"These figures show just how important a rigorous recall process will be for practices in the coming months, to ensure these FTAs do not become lost patients."
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