Our cancellation policy is that patients must cancel appointments by phone during business hours the day prior to their appointment in order to not be charged a late cancel fee, or they can still cancel online up to 24 hours before.  All patients will be granted one free late cancellation every year—we understand things happen and want to be respectful of this.  The fee for a late cancellation is $45 for followups and $100 for new patient appointments.  The no show fee for followups is the full price of the appointment which is $90.  In the event AFA is able to fill your late cancellation with another patient, we will also waive the late cancellation fee, though this is never guaranteed.

 

Due to COVID, Annapolis Family Acupuncture has strived the past few years to be as lenient and understanding as possible about late cancellations.  We understand that kids returning to school is resulting in record numbers of illness.  Truthfully, times are tough, aren’t they?  We are all trying to catch up and living under immense pressure to do so.  This past season in particular, AFA has experienced higher numbers than ever before of late cancellations and we have excused many because we do not enjoy charging our patients late cancel fees.  We are striving to find a happy medium that both recognizes we all face extenuating circumstances such as illness and car troubles and our employees’ needs to be fairly compensated for their time. 

 

We want you to know that we have deliberated long and hard over what to do about our cancellation policy.  When late cancellations happen in excess, this impacts our ability to pay our overhead and maintain living wages for our employees.  We understand it isn’t personal, but unfortunately, it does impact us in very personal ways, and out of a very strong desire to honor our employees and AFA’s ability to continue to serve our community, we wanted to inform you of this update of our cancellation policy and will be holding firmer boundaries with it beginning January 1st 2023.

 

We also want to remind you that acupuncture is extremely effective at treating colds (called Wind Invasions in Chinese medicine) and other viral infections.  There are entire textbooks written on it and it is a huge focus in Chinese Medicine school!  Unless you have COVID or have had a COVID exposure, please call us so we can triage and determine if you should keep your appointments when you are sick—you will not be charged in cases where we ask you not to come in.  Employees of AFA continue to wear masks and we practice strict levels of cleanliness.  We do ask that you wear a mask when symptomatic and call us from your car and we will call you back and take you directly to your room once it is ready.

 

We wish to communicate that being charged for a late cancellation is not a punishment and we hope you can understand, it is merely so that we can pay our employees something for their time and stay open in order to keep doing what we love, supporting our incredible community that we adore.