When looking around online for dental solutions, patients quickly discover that emergency appointments almost always cost much more than regular checkups at any given dental practice.

They're priced at quite the premium - and that premium is overwhelmingly often purely for the convenience of being seen sooner rather than later.

But that, what you might call, "queue-skipping premium" is not at all what the point of an emergency dental appointment is. An emergency appointment is simply dental appointment that's about a problem in particular, as opposed to a checkup, which is just a routine appointment for making sure your teeth and gums are in good health.

However, patients across the UK immediately feel the initial appointment pricing sting when dental problems do arise. They see those emergency premiums for the emergency appointments themselves, and think, "Why can't I just be seen at a fair price?"

There are a number of reasons why most dental practices charge more for an emergency appointment in the first place, but regardless of any reason they might give, it is actually possible for patients to be seen for dental emergencies at a fair price. Emergency dental services demonstrate this, with their very competitive pricing structures.

For example, for an emergency, same-day dental appointment that's even cheaper than most dentist's price their checkups, UrgentCare Dental offers £20 same-day appointments across Northern England, with most response times under an hour. Urgent Care Dental officially advertise that they can handle all dental emergencies too.

Most Dental Practices Charge £50-150 for an Emergency Appointment

On the lower end of the price range, between £50-70 is the most commonly seen price range for an emergency dental appointment, usually seen with emergency dental services.

Going back to UrgentCare Dental, as an example, they provide emergency appointments even lower, for only £20, including free X-rays. The question patients often daren't ask, is "how do these emergency-focused practices offer such low prices without breaking the bank?"

How Dental Practices Charge for Emergency Appointments

When a patient sees a dentist for a dental emergency, a dentist's time is taken up, the clinic itself has very high overhead costs, and X-rays are usually taken to accurately diagnose a patient's dental problem.

All of that, for under £100, wouldn't make a very sustainable business model, if emergency appointments were run like regular doctor appointments - where a patient comes in, gets seen, and then leaves usually without an immediate solution available.

Emergency dentistry is different. Completely different.

You see, dentistry is a very advanced science, and patients are usually seen for a dental problem that needs immediate attention. If there's pain, or dental trauma, there's a solution available, and treatment for the vast majority of dental problems is able to be carried out immediately.

It's this very close tie between problem and solution, that makes it possible for emergency dentistry services to exist at such low prices. It's not that the cost is back-loaded in the treatment prices - they're often actually very competitive compared to regular dental practices. It's that the patients they see reliably really do need urgent dental care.

Why Dental Practices Often Charge £100+ for Emergency Appointments

It's not necessarily the case that these practices are purely charging a premium to be seen sooner just because they can. What is most often the case is that they have very full patient lists, and are already booked up for weeks.

Practices like that, who do offer emergency appointments, often leave small gaps in their diaries for patients to be seen on a short notice, but there's no guarantee there will be a patient that needs to be seen that day, so these time slots have the potential to go to waste.

Essentially, the "premium" there that a patient pays for an emergency appointment at a regular dental practice, is, ironically, paying for the time which other patients weren't seen.

Of course, dentists at regular dental practices are just as well trained at treating dental problems as emergency dentists, but dentists who treat emergencies day-in, day-out? That's what they do, and they're very good at.

Dental Practices vs Emergency Dentistry Services

For patients wondering about the distinction between reputable dental practices that can handle emergencies and highly rated emergency dentists, they'll find that both are able to treat dental emergencies just as well as each other - they're trained dentists after all, and they're very good at what they do.

However, patients tend to pay more at a regular dental practice for the same treatment, even when treatment plan discounts are taken into account. Emergency dental services often offer treatment plans too, that are very competitive compared to regular dental practices.

For patients in Leeds, Manchester and further afield in Northern England, UrgentCare Dental offer emergency appointments for £20, including free X-rays. UrgentCare Dental satisfy hundreds of new patients per month at each location by diagnosing and treating their dental problems in a same-day emergency dental appointment.