In order to provide you with the highest standard of dental care, this practice is required to collect personal information from you. This information covers basic details such as your name, address, telephone number, and email address but it is also necessary for the dentist to obtain from you details regarding your general health and past medical or surgical events. Without this general health picture, the treating dentist is unable to plan your care properly.
Naturally, some of this information is of a personal nature and some of it might be regarded as ‘sensitive’ and not the sort of information that you would wish to be unnecessarily disclosed to others.
We value the need to safeguard this information and, in accordance with the principles laid down by the Privacy Act 1988 and the guidelines issued by the Australian Dental Association, we would like to assure you that:
- This information will only be used by the treating dentist in order to deliver your care to the highest standards.
- It will not be disclosed to those not associated with your treatment without your consent except as provided under the legislation and where we consider you would have a reasonable expectation of us to provide such information.
- You may seek access to the information held about you and we will provide this access without undue delay. This access might be by inspection of your dental records at the time of appointment or by special access or copying of information at other times.
- There will be no charge made for requesting this information but there may be fees levied just to cover the costs associated with the processing of this request or the copying of information.
- We will take reasonable steps to ensure at all times that the details we keep about you are accurate, complete, and up-to-date.
- We will take reasonable steps to protect this information from misuse or loss and from unauthorized access, modification, or disclosure.
- Our staff members are trained to respect these principles at all times.
- If you have a complaint with the way we have dealt with your personal information you may lodge a complaint with us to which we will promptly reply with a view to resolution or if dissatisfied with our dealings of your complaint, or at any time, you may refer to the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner.
If you have any questions regarding the information we collect from you and securely store in your dental records, please do not hesitate to ask us.