Fees

At Granta Dental, we aim to offer you not only the highest level of care but also excellent value for money. This page contains what you might need to know about the way we approach fees and payments. For a full listing of our current fees, click here.

What we charge you for

As a private practice, we need to charge you the total cost of your dental care. Our advice and treatment charges include staff, equipment, materials, training and laboratory costs. If we are planning treatment or giving you information rather than treating you, we calculate these charges at a lower, administrative rate.

Time-charged appointments

For some appointments, it's unclear what treatment you'll need - perhaps you're a new patient, or we haven't seen you for a while, or you're in pain but we don't know in advance what the problem is. Here we charge you by time. This means that if we only take a short amount of time we charge you less - but if we take a long time, we have to charge you more. For our hourly rate, click here.

Treatment-charged appointments

For routine appointments like checkups, or for appointments that have been made for a particular treatment such as a filling, we usually know the costs involved. In this case, we're able to charge a fixed fee and can tell you this in advance when you book your treatment. We provide written estimates for all treatments; for our scale of fees click here.

New patients

If you're a new patient we'll charge you a booking fee beforehand to reserve your appointment slot; of course once you attend the appointment we deduct this deposit from your appointment fee.

Emergency appointments

If you ring needing an emergency appointment and you can come to see us during normal surgery hours, we charge our usual rates. If you can't wait for surgery hours, we do have to charge you a call-out fee of £160 when you book; any further fee for consultation or treatment will be charged in addition when you come to the surgery. Patients who are on our Oral Health Membership Plan pay only normal treatment fees and not emergency call-out fees.

Broken appointments

If you break or cancel your appointment we have to charge you a fee unless we can use the time for another patient. However we do accept that missed appointments are often beyond reasonable control and in this event we try to be sympathetic. For very long or complex appointments and for new patients, we'll charge an advance fee; if you then miss an appointment that part of your advance fee may not be refundable.

Payment and outstanding accounts

Payment is due on the day you have your treatment, except in exceptional circumstances that you have agreed in advance with us. An administration charge will be levied on accounts which are outstanding after 30 days.

We've introduced payment choices to help you meet your individual budgeting needs. Do speak to our reception staff, who are trained to arrange the best option for your needs without compromising your dental care.

Spreading payments for treatment

For all planned treatments - those that don't fall under the heading of screening, preventive, or emergency dentistry - we can arrange for you to pay in instalments or through a finance package tailored to your needs.

Our Oral Health Membership Plan

When it comes to payments for routine care, we know from listening to your comments that it is helpful for you to know in advance exactly what the cost of these services is. Many of you prefer to make regular small payments through the year rather than paying for each appointment at the time.

Our Oral Health Membership Plan spreads the cost of all screening and preventive dentistry. It covers routine care, plus you get priority appointments, no call-out fees for out-of-hours emergencies, and worldwide accident and emergency dental cover. Regular attendance for routine care reduces the need for, and improves the outcome of, any dental treatment; we recognise this by giving all subscribers a valuable 10% discount off treatment fees.

Membership plans cover all check-up appointments for screening of:

• cavities
• gum disease
• oral cancer
• dental and facial growth and development
• bite and jaw joints
• snoring and sleep apnoea

Plans also cover:

• hygienist appointments
• monitoring X-rays and photographs
• plaque testing
• saliva testing
• hygiene advice
• diet advice
• T-Scan computerised bite analysis
• 10% reduction on all non-routine treatment fees.

Before you enter the Membership Plan, we'll examine you and decide on your level of clinical need - naturally the more checkups you need over a period, the higher the fee. This is an indication of the average clinical time available for each level of need.

For children, we offer the same membership at the following discount off the adult monthly fee:

• Under 5 years: 50%
• 5-10 years: 40%
• 11-15 years: 25%
• 16-21 years: 10%

The minimum term for the payment plan is 12 months. Payments are by direct debit, and there is a 5% discount if you pay your subscription annually and in advance. We also give discounts for children and young people under 21. If you're taking up a course of treatment that lasts more than three months we do expect you to subscribe to our membership plan by completing a simple form.