Privacy
What a practice collects, why it holds it, who else sees it, and how to change your mind.
This is demonstration content. Rivergate Dental is a fictional practice, so no information is actually collected by this page and nothing below is a binding policy. It is written the way a real clinic's privacy page would be written, because that is what the demonstration is showing.
What is collected
Contact details, health history relevant to dental care, treatment records and images, insurance information where coverage applies, and a record of appointments and communications.
Why it is held
To provide care, to contact you about appointments, to bill and to process insurance claims where you have asked us to, and to meet the record-keeping obligations a dental practice is subject to.
It is not sold, not rented, and not used for marketing.
Who else sees it
- Staff involved in your care, and only to the extent their role requires.
- Your insurer, when you have asked us to submit a claim on your behalf.
- Another practitioner, when you have asked for a referral or a transfer.
- Service providers who help run the practice, bound to protect it.
Anything beyond that requires your consent, or a legal obligation that leaves no choice.
Appointment reminders and messages
Reminders go to the channel you chose when you registered, and only about your own appointments. Choosing to receive them is not a condition of being seen.
Telling us to stop applies everywhere at once. There is not a separate list per kind of message, because that arrangement guarantees that one of them eventually keeps sending after you have asked it not to.
Where information is stored
Records are held in Canada. Some services that carry messages, such as text message delivery, route through providers outside the country, which is described here rather than left out. A practice that says nothing leaves you to assume, and the assumption is usually wrong in one direction or the other.
How long it is kept
Dental records are retained for the period required of a practice in this province, which is measured in years rather than months and runs from the last appointment. After that they are securely destroyed.
Seeing and correcting your record
You can ask to see what is held about you and to have factual errors corrected. Ask the front desk and you will be told what the process is and how long it takes.
Questions or a complaint
Raise it with the practice first, because most concerns turn out to be something that can be explained or fixed the same day. If that does not resolve it, the provincial privacy commissioner accepts complaints directly.
The assistant on this site
The chat assistant answers from the published content of this website. It has no access to patient records, no ability to book or change an appointment, and no memory of you between visits to the site. Do not type health information into it.