Privacy policy.

This policy explains how Dental Spot handles your personal information, including your health information: what we collect, why, who sees it, how we keep it safe, and how you can see or correct it.

Dental Spot (7 The Strand, Croydon NSW 2132, ABN 18 148 863 736) follows the Australian Privacy Principles in the Privacy Act 1988 (Cth) and the Health Privacy Principles in the Health Records and Information Privacy Act 2002 (NSW).

What we collect

• Your name, date of birth, address, phone number and email.
• Your medical and dental history, medicines and allergies, and notes from your appointments.
• X-rays, scans, photos of your teeth and digital impressions.
• Health fund, Medicare and Child Dental Benefits Schedule details.
• Payment details.
• What you tell us through our website’s callback form: your name, phone number and, if you choose, what your call is about.

We only collect what we need to care for you and run the practice.

How we collect it

Mostly from you: in person, over the phone, by email and through our website. With your consent, we may also get information from other dentists, doctors and health practitioners, your health fund or Services Australia.

We keep records in our practice management software and in secure storage, at the practice or with service providers who store data for us.

Why we use it

• To assess your teeth and gums and provide treatment.
• To refer you to other dentists or health practitioners, and to work with our on-site dental lab when you need something made.
• To bill you and claim from your health fund, Medicare or the Child Dental Benefits Schedule.
• To remind you about appointments and check-ups.
• To meet our legal obligations, and to run and improve the practice.

We won’t use your information for anything else without your consent, unless the law requires or allows it.

Who we share it with

Only as needed for the reasons above:

• Other dentists, doctors and health practitioners involved in your care.
• Our on-site dental lab.
• Your health fund, Medicare and Services Australia, to process claims.
• The providers of our IT systems, software, email and website, who handle information on our behalf.
• Anyone else you agree to, or where the law requires or allows it, for example to lessen a serious threat to someone’s health or safety.

Information sent overseas

Some of the service providers that help us run the practice, such as software, email and website providers, may store or process information outside Australia. When they do, we take reasonable steps to make sure your information is protected to the standard Australian privacy law requires.

Our website

The callback form. When you leave your number, the form sends your name, phone number and chosen topic to our front desk through an email service. Please don’t include health details in it; we’ll talk about those when we call. We keep callback requests only for as long as we need them to call you back and keep our records.

The review helper. On our review page you can ask for help writing a Google review. What you type there is sent once to an AI service, which may process it outside Australia, to write a draft that comes back to your screen. We don’t keep your answers or the draft, and nothing is posted until you paste it into Google yourself. Reviews on Google are public and covered by Google’s privacy policy.

Analytics and advertising. Our website has no advertising pixels or remarketing tags: nothing from Meta (Facebook and Instagram), TikTok or Google Ads. We may use Google Analytics to count visits and see which pages people find useful. If we do, it’s set up without Google’s advertising features, and it never receives what you type into the callback form or the review helper.

Your browser. If you change how much the site animates, your browser remembers that choice for the visit. It isn’t sent to us.

Links to other websites (Google Maps, Instagram, health funds) take you to services with their own privacy policies.

Marketing

We use your contact details to remind you about appointments and check-ups. We don’t send you other marketing unless you’ve agreed to it, and you can ask us to stop at any time.

Staying anonymous

You can ask general questions without telling us who you are, and you can use the callback form with just a first name. To treat you and claim on your behalf, we need to know who you are.

Keeping it safe

We protect your information from misuse, loss and unauthorised access. Only staff who need it for your care or for billing can see it.

We keep health records for as long as the law requires, including the minimum periods set by NSW law. After that, we destroy them securely or remove anything that identifies you.

If a data breach is likely to cause you serious harm, we’ll tell you and the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner, as the Notifiable Data Breaches scheme requires.

Seeing and correcting your information

You can ask for a copy of your records, or ask us to correct something that’s wrong. Call or write to us. We’ll respond within 45 days. If there’s a charge for copies of your records, it will be reasonable and we’ll tell you before we go ahead.

Questions and complaints

Contact our privacy officer through the front desk: call (02) 9715 6567, email info@dentalspot.com.au, or write to us at 7 The Strand, Croydon NSW 2132.

If you’re not happy with our response, you can complain to the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner (oaic.gov.au, 1300 363 992) or the NSW Information and Privacy Commission (ipc.nsw.gov.au).

Changes to this policy

We’ll update this policy when how we handle information changes. The date at the top of the page shows when it last changed.