Your Privacy
We care about the trust you place in us. This page sets out how we handle your information, and what we deliberately don’t do.
No cameras in clinical areas
Your time in the chair is your own. There are no cameras in our treatment rooms or in the consultation area. We do have cameras at the practice entrance, for the safety and security of patients and staff. Entrance footage is held for 60 days and then overwritten. The system is a cloud-connected service, so that footage is stored on the provider’s servers rather than here.
No AI transcription
We don’t use AI transcription or note-taking services. Your conversations in this practice are not recorded and are not processed by any listening device.
Dr Verdickt takes your medical history himself, face to face, and writes the notes himself.
Your record is not on the internet
Your clinical record is held on a computer that is not connected to the internet. It cannot be reached remotely. Paper records are held on site in restricted access storage. Six months after your visit they are scanned into that offline system, and the paper is then securely destroyed, either by a contracted secure document destruction company or by cross-cut shredding here.
We should be precise about what that covers. The record system is offline. The way information reaches us is not. Referrals arrive by text message and by email, and our email is Google Workspace, so correspondence may be stored on servers outside Australia before it is filed to the offline system. We keep that period as short as we can and delete the correspondence once it has been filed. If you would prefer your referral not to travel by email, tell us and we will arrange another way.
What we ask for, and why
Our online referral form asks your Dentist for your first name and the first three letters of your surname only. It is a public form on the internet, so we keep the identifying information on it to a minimum. Our receptionist then phones your Dentist’s practice for the rest of your details. That call also confirms the referral is genuine.
Who else sees your information
Your referring Dentist. We write to them after every appointment, including reviews, on the day. They need to know what we found and what we did, because they will be placing the final filling or crown.
Nobody else, in the ordinary course. We have no arrangement with any health fund and we do not use HICAPS, so nothing about you is sent to a fund by us. If you need a 3D scan, we hand you a paper referral to take to the radiology practice yourself. We do not transmit it.
If an account is not paid. Where an account remains unpaid and we have been unable to resolve it with you, we may pass your contact and debt details to a debt collection service. We will have told you in writing before that happens.
We do not sell your information, and we do not use it for marketing.
How long we keep it
We are required by law to keep your health record for seven years from the last occasion we provided you with care. Where you were under 18 at the time, we keep it until you turn 25.
Radiation records
If you have had X-rays here, the clinical images form part of your record and are held the same way. We keep separate radiation safety records covering the equipment, its testing and our staff’s radiation monitoring. Those records are about the practice and its staff, not about you.
Seeing your record
You can ask to see the information we hold about you, and to have it corrected if it is wrong. Just ask us. There is no fee. A copy of the report we sent your Dentist can usually be provided the same day. A full copy of your record takes longer, and we allow up to seven days, or seven days from Dr Verdickt’s return if he is away.
If something goes wrong
If you think your privacy has not been respected, please tell us first. You can also contact the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner on 1300 363 992 or at oaic.gov.au, or the NSW Information and Privacy Commission on 1800 472 679 or at ipc.nsw.gov.au.
Cookies and this website
We do not use Google Analytics, advertising pixels, or any third-party tracking on this website. Nothing about your visit is sent to an advertiser or an analytics company. Wix, our website platform, sets cookies needed for the site to work and counts basic visit statistics such as page views. That information is not linked to you.
The full policy
The detailed policy, setting out what we collect, why, and how we handle it, is at privacy policy.