Where a patient repeatedly fails to attend for planned care, or cancels at short notice, the following considerations must be applied.
Where a practice's contract agreement with the Commissioner stipulates how many opportunities a patient should be given to fail to attend for treatment before a course of treatment claim is submitted as 'Incomplete Treatment', these contractual obligations must be complied with.
The practice must have an agreed 'Fail to Attend'/'Short Notice Cancellation' Policy in place to make sure a consistent, fair, and transparent process is undertaken when a patient fails to attend for an appointment or cancels at short notice.
All members of the practice team must be familiar and comply with the practice policy.
To make sure incomplete courses of treatment claims are identified clearly, a Contract clinician must make sure the following claim entries are made:
- the date of the patient's last visit is recorded
- the appropriate 'Incomplete Treatment' charge band is entered on the claim to identify work that's been completed, this is Part 3 on form FP17 and is used to calculate the patient charge due
- the treatment band which reflects the treatment that's been started but not completed during that course of treatment is entered on Part 5 of form FP17 - this is used to calculate the contract activity to be scheduled
The band crossed in Part 5 on the FP17 must be the same as, or higher than, the band crossed in Part 3 on the FP17.
The 'Late Submission' rule does not apply to claims submitted as 'Incomplete Treatment'.
The number of 'Incomplete Treatment' claims submitted is monitored.
If unusual patterns of incomplete course of treatment activity are identified, these will be flagged up in an exception report to the Commissioner.