Privacy Policy

This policy applies to Beaufort Street Dental Centre

Beaufort Street Dental Centre website Privacy Policy sets out our personal information management practices. Throughout the policy, we refer to your ‘personal information’ which means information which identifies you as an individual or from which you can be reasonably identified. Your name, address and telephone number are examples of personal information. ‘Health information’ is a type of sensitive personal information that relates to your health.

Our handling of personal information is subject to Australian Privacy Principles (‘APPs’) contained in the Privacy Act 1988 (Cth), as amended

Introduction & Purpose:

Your privacy and maintaining the confidentiality of your personal information is important to us to ensure patients who receive care at Beaufort Street Dental Centre are comfortable in entrusting their health information to Beaufort Street Dental Centre. We are committed to safeguarding your personal information. This privacy statement explains:

• What information we collect
• How information is collected, used and handled.
• When information may be disclosed to third parties with Your consent
• Your rights for requesting access to or amending Your personal information
• How you can provide us with feedback or make a complaint.

This document may be amended by us from time to time

Consent Definition:

Consent means your permission. Your consent can be expressed or implied. Expressed consent can be written (e.g. when you sign a form or send us correspondence) or verbal (e.g. when you give us your permission over the phone or in face-to-face conversations). Your consent will be implied when we can reasonably form a conclusion from our pre-established relationship with you that the given consent by either taking action or deciding not to take action.

Beaufort Street Dental Centre will only interpret and apply a patients’ consent for the primary purpose for which it was provided.

Information We Collect:

At Beaufort Street Dental Centre, we will only collect information that is necessary for providing our services to you & information that is necessary for the purposes for which it will be used.

At Beaufort Street Dental Centre, we will need to collect, use, hold and share personal information as a provision of clinical services to a patient at the practice. Collected personal information may include:

• Names, date of birth, addresses and contact details
• Medicare number (where available & when needed only ) for identification and claiming purposes
• Health fund details
• Medical information including medical history, medications, allergies, adverse events, immunisations, social history, family history and risk factors.

A patient’s personal information may be held at Beaufort Street Dental Centre in various forms:

• As paper records
• As electronic records
• As visual – x-ray, CT scans, videos and photos

How Information May Be Collected

Our procedure for collecting personal information is set out below.

• Beaufort Street Dental Centre collects patients’ personal and demographic information via registration when patients present to the practice for the first time. Patients are encouraged to pay attention to the collection statement attached to/within the form and information about the management of collected information and patient privacy.
• During the course of providing dental services, Beaufort Street Dental Centre healthcare practitioners will consequently collect further personal information as needed
• Beaufort Street Dental Centre may also collect personal information when patients visit our website, send us an email or SMS, telephone us, make an online appointment or communicate with us using social media.
• Personal information may also be collected from other sources, when practical and necessary. We may also collect information from third parties if you have provided them with consent under their own privacy policies.

This may include information from:

• The patients’ guardian or responsible person
• Other involved healthcare specialists, allied health professionals, hospitals, community dental health services and pathology/diagnostic imaging services.
• The patients’ health fund, Medicare or the Department of Veteran’s Affairs (as necessary)

If you do not provide us with your personal information, we may be unable to provide you with the products or services that you are requesting.

Beaufort Street Dental Centre holds all personal information securely, whether in electronic format, in protected information systems or in hard copy format in a secured environment.

How Information May Be Collected

We use your personal information primarily to provide, manage and administer our services and products to you and operate an efficient and sustainable healthcare. Personal information will only be used for the purpose of providing dental services and for directly related business activities, such as financial claims and payments, practice audits and accreditation, and business processes (e.g. staff training)

If you submit online forms or send emails to us containing personal information, we will use that information to respond to your message or to contact you. The main purpose of collecting and using personal information submitted through our web site is to respond to enquiries or feedback from this site.

We may store your contact information for future reference.

Beaufort Street Dental Centre will not use any personal information in relation to direct marketing to a patient without that patients’ express consent. Patients may opt-out of direct marketing at any time by notifying Beaufort Street Dental Centre in a letter or email.

Beaufort Street Dental Centre evaluates all unsolicited information it receives to decide if it should be kept, acted on or destroyed.

Disclosure to Third Parties

In order to allow us to provide manage and administer our products and services to you and to operate an efficient and sustainable business, we may be required to disclose your information to third parties. This may include disclosure in the following circumstances:

• To your nominated relatives in an emergency;
• To government and regulatory bodies, e.g. Medicare;
• To auditors and other service providers We may appoint to ensure the integrity of Our operations
• To any person or entity acting on our behalf
• To third party health benefit providers and insurance companies (contact information only); to assist in the processing of a claim for reimbursement or payment by you or on your behalf;
• To carry out a review of the practice for the purposes of improving the quality of care provided; and
• Where disclosure is required by law, e.g. compulsory notices from courts of law, tribunals or government agencies.
• Necessary to lessen or prevent a serious threat to a patient’s life, health or safety or public health or safety, or it is impractical to obtain the patient’s consent
• To assist in locating a missing person
• To establish, exercise or defend an equitable claim
• For the purpose of a confidential dispute resolution process
• When there is a statutory requirement to share certain personal information (e.g. some diseases require mandatory notification)

Beaufort Street Dental Centre will inform the patient where there is a statutory requirement to disclose certain personal information (for example, some diseases require mandatory notification).

Beaufort Street Dental Centre will not disclose personal information to anyone outside Australia without need and without patient consent.

Direct marketing

From time to time, we may contact you to provide you with information about other products and services offered by us, our related entities and our business partners that may be of benefit to you and your family. This Includes Information about Beaufort Street Dental Centre. When we contact you it may be via mail, phone, email or SMS. If you do not wish to receive marketing material from us you can contact us at any time to let us know via email or written letter. Our contact details are at the end of this policy. When you contact us to make this request, we will action your request within 10 working days.

If you request not to receive marketing material, please note that we will still contact you in relation to our on-going relationship with you. For example, we will still send you any bills, statements and notices that are relevant to the products and services you have purchased from us.

Handling and storage of Personal Information

At Beaufort Street Dental Centre, we will take reasonable steps to ensure that your personal information is stored securely and is protected from misuse and loss and from unauthorised access, modification or disclosure. We will take reasonable steps to ensure that personal information provided by you will be handled in accordance with Australian privacy laws including the Australian privacy principles. We maintain strict data security standards and procedures with a view to preventing unauthorised access to your data by anyone other than us.

Your personal information may be handled by our employees. Information may be used by staff at Beaufort Street Dental Centre for the administration and in the provision of our services to you.

We keep your personal information for as long as it is required to provide you with the services and products you requested from us and to comply with legal requirements.

If we no longer require your personal information for any purpose, including legal purposes, we will take reasonable steps to securely destroy or de-identify your personal information except in circumstances permitted or required by law.

Accessing and Correcting Your Information

Access to personal information

You have the right to access personal information that is held about you. You can ask us for access to the information that we hold about you at any time. Simply contact us from the details below to discuss your request. We will always endeavour to meet your request for access within a reasonable time and in the manner requested by you if it is reasonable to do so.

However in some circumstances, access to certain information may be declined. This includes the following circumstances.

• Providing access would have an unreasonable impact on the privacy of others
• The request is frivolous or vexatious;
• The information relates to existing or anticipated legal proceedings and would not normally be disclosed as part of those proceedings
• Providing access would be unlawful
• Denying access is required by law;
• Providing access would be likely to prejudice the prevention, detection, investigation and prosecution of possible unlawful activity
• Where access would pose a threat to the life or health of any individua

If we are unable to give you access to the information you have requested, we will give you written reasons for this decision when we respond to your request.

We may charge you a reasonable fee for access to some types of information. This charge will be limited to the cost of recouping our costs for providing you with the information. For example, document retrieval, photocopy, labour and delivery to you. We will not charge you to make a request to access your information.

Correcting your personal information

To enable us to provide you with the best possible service, it is important that the information we hold about you is accurate. We will take reasonable steps to ensure that your personal information is accurate, complete and up-to-date at the time of collecting, using or disclosing it. If you believe any information we hold about you is inaccurate, incomplete or out-of-date, you should contact us to let us know. We will respond to your request within a reasonable period and will take reasonable steps to amend your records.

Website Security

At Beaufort Street Dental Centre, protection of personal privacy is a priority for us.
We cannot guarantee that all information transmitted over internet to be secure. We cannot guarantee the security of any information that you transmit to us, or receive from us. The transmission and exchange of information is carried out at your own risk. Although we take measures to safeguard against unauthorised disclosures of information, we cannot assure you that personal information that we collect will not be disclosed in a manner that is inconsistent with this Privacy Policy. Our website does not provide facilities that guarantee secure transmission of information over the internet. You should be aware that there are risks in transmitting information across the internet, including online forms and email. If you are concerned about conveying sensitive or personal material to us over the internet, contact us by telephone to discuss the matter.

Our website contains links to other websites. You should take care in providing personal information to external websites linked to our website. We are not responsible for the privacy practices of other websites or external websites linked to this website.

We collect standard web server/visitor traffic information, commonly referred to as aggregate information, regarding overall website traffic patterns. Normally, web servers collect this type of basic information as part of their web log processes. We only use this information for statistical, reporting and website administration and maintenance purposes. It is not used in a way that individually identifies you, and we do not report on individual users.

Links to Other Websites

Our site may contain links to other websites of interest. We do not have any control over those websites. We are not responsible for or liable for the protection and privacy of any information which you provide whilst visiting such websites, and such websites are not governed by this Privacy Policy.

Use of Cookies

We may use cookies on this site from time to time. Cookies are text files placed in your computer browser to store your preferences. Cookies, by themselves, do not tell us your e-mail address or other personally identifiable information. However, once you choose to furnish the site with personally identifiable information, this information may be linked to the data stored in the cookie.

A cookie is a block of data that is shared between a web server and a user’s browser. Cookies give the server information about a user’s identity and website visiting patterns and preferences. You can find more information about cookies at the Microsoft website.

Google Analytics

Google Analytics features may be implemented for display advertising including remarketing, Google Display Network Impression Reporting, the DoubleClick Campaign Manager Integration, and Google Analytics Demographics and Interest Reporting.

We will not facilitate the merging of personally-identifiable information with non-personally identifiable information previously collected from display advertising features that is based on the DoubleClick cookie unless We have robust notice of, and the user’s prior affirmative (i.e., opt-in) consent to, that merger.

We may use Remarketing with Google Analytics to advertise online. Third-party vendors, including Google, show Dental Care Network ads on sites across the Internet.

We and third-party vendors, including Google, use first-party cookies (such as the Google Analytics cookie) and third-party cookies (such as the DoubleClick cookie) together to inform, optimize, and serve ads based on someone’s past visits to our website.

We and third-party vendors, including Google, use first-party cookies (such as the Google Analytics cookies) and third-party cookies (such as the DoubleClick cookie) together to report how our ad impressions, other uses of ad services, and interactions with these ad impressions and ad services are related to these visits.

We use data from Google’s Interest-based advertising or 3rd-party audience data (such as age, gender and interests) with Google Analytics to analyse demographic and interest profiles of visitors to the site.

You can opt-out of Google Analytics for display advertising and customize Google Display Network ads using the Ads Settings.

You can download the Google Analytics opt-out browser add-on providing the ability to prevent their data from being collected and used by google analytics.

Changes to the Privacy Statement

This policy will be reviewed from time to time to take account of new laws and technology, changes to our operations and other necessary developments. Updates will be publicised on the website policy documents.

Our Contact Information and Resolving your Concerns

You can contact us at any time if you have any questions or concerns about this document or about how your personal information has been handled.

You can contact our Privacy Officer by directing your correspondence to:

The Privacy Officer
Beaufort Street Dental Centre
Unit 5, 689 Beaufort Street,
Mount Lawley, WA 6050

Beaufort Street Dental Centre will manage any concerns internally & directly with you.

If you are not happy with our response, or if you do not feel your complaint has been resolved, you are able to seek advice from the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner (OAIC):

The Australian Privacy Commissioner is able to receive complaints concerning privacy issues. Complaints should have a response within 28 days

Australian Privacy Commissioner
Privacy hotline 1300363992
GPO Box 5218
Sydney NSW 2001

http://www.privacy.gov.au/complaints

Members of the public may make a notification to Australian Health Practitioner Regulation Agency (AHPRA) http://www.ahpra.gov.au about the conduct, health or performance of a practitioner or the health of a student. Practitioners, employers and education providers are all mandated by law to report notifiable, conduct relating to a registered practitioner or student of AHPRA.