Nobody there? Courts are inconsistent about when doctors are allowed to charge cancellation fees.
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The courts are inconsistent in their assessment of whether patients who do not attend appointments have to pay. In case of doubt, doctors must prove loss of earnings. A guest post.
In many medical practices, patients who cancel an agreed appointment at short notice or miss it without excuse are required to pay a cancellation fee. Is that legal? This question also concerns the courts. The judgments so far are by no means uniform.
However, there is widespread agreement that appointment practices can charge cancellation fees for time-consuming appointments that require a certain amount of planning if patients do not show up or cancel at short notice. The Federal Court of Justice fundamentally confirmed this in a ruling from 2022 (ref. III ZR 78/21). Cancellation fees come into consideration if complex treatments are pending, such as longer dental treatments, examinations by a specialist or psychotherapy sessions. In busy general practitioner practices, however, appointments can usually be given to other patients at short notice.
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