Privacy Policy

Last updated May 2024. The text of the policy is reproduced below as published. A plain-English summary of your rights follows at the end and forms no part of the policy itself.

Smile Solutions Pty Ltd (ABN 28 193 514 103) is a provider of hygiene, general dental, specialist dental care and beauty therapy services and is bound by the Australian Privacy Principles in the Privacy Act 1988 (Cth) (Privacy Act). We understand the importance of, and are committed to, protecting your personal information. This Privacy Policy explains how we manage your personal information (that is, information, or an opinion, whether true or not, and whether recorded in a material form or not, about an individual whose identity is apparent, or can be reasonably ascertained from the information or opinion).

When you accept our products or services, contact us, or visit the Smile Solutions website at www.smilesolutions.com.au you agree to the handling of your personal information according to this policy.

Note: ‘Smile Solutions’, ‘We’, ‘Us’, ‘Our’ refers to Smile Solutions Pty Ltd (ABN 28 193 514 103), Core Dental Group Pty Ltd (ABN 37 612 345 794), P S Formula Pty Ltd (ABN 45 095 802 798) and related entities and bodies corporate. ‘You’, ‘Your’ refers to patients or individuals who contact Smile Solutions or access the Smile Solutions website.

Types of information we collect

The types of information we may collect includes (but is not limited to):

• Your name and contact details including postal address, email address, phone numbers;
• Personal details such as age or gender;
• Medicare number and private health insurance details;
• Financial information (for example credit card numbers or bank account details for payment of services); and
• Sensitive information including health information, medical history, dental assessment and treatment plans.

Collection of personal information

Where it is reasonably practicable to do so, we will collect your personal information directly from you. We may collect the personal information you directly give us through some of the following means:

• Where you lodge an enquiry through our website located at www.smilesolutions.com.au;
• When you contact us via telephone, facsimile or email;
• In administering and performing any contracts with service providers;
• From correspondence with you (whether in writing or electronically);
• While conducting customer satisfaction and market research surveys;
• When administering any of our services; and
• As otherwise required to manage our business.

We will only collect sensitive information about you with your consent, or otherwise in accordance with the Privacy Act.

You have the right to either refuse to provide details about yourself or remain anonymous. However, some Smile Solutions’ services (for example responding to enquiries and provision of treatment) can be provided only if Smile Solutions has your personal information.

In certain cases we may collect personal information from publicly available sources and third parties such as your treating dental clinician, our business partners, your health insurance provider or Medicare. If we collect personal information about you from a third party we will, where appropriate, request that the third party inform you that we are holding such information, how we will use and disclose it, and that you may contact us to gain access to and correct and update the information.

Use and disclosure of your personal information

Smile Solutions’ primary purpose in collecting your personal information is to facilitate the smooth operation of its service and activities. We may use your personal information for a number of purposes including:

• The provision of dental services, beauty therapy and other healthcare services including contacting you in relation to those services and managing your patient file;
• Responding to your enquiries;
• Internal purposes including administration, accounting and reporting statistical information about our products and services;
• To improve the content and layout of the Smile Solutions website and determine general marketplace information about visitors to the website;
• To send information to you about Smile Solutions;
• To comply with any legislation or regulations as required; and
• Otherwise to manage our business.

Smile Solutions may be required to disclose your personal information to third parties where necessary to complete a request from you or to carry out a service. Examples of circumstances where we may disclose to third parties include:

• To healthcare professionals (dentists, dental specialists) where required to provide you dental services;
• To organisations that provide us with technical and support services;
• To your nominated emergency contact;
• To government and regulatory bodies including Medicare;
• To third party health benefit providers and insurance companies (sensitive health information will not be provided);
• To our professional advisors;
• Where required by law.

Storage of personal information

We will hold personal information as either secure physical records, electronically on our dental software system, in cloud storage or on an offsite server. Smile Solutions will take all reasonable steps to ensure all personal information is stored securely and protected from unauthorised access or disclosure.

Your information may be accessed by our employees, dentists, dental specialists or other persons required to provide our services to you.

We maintain appropriate physical, procedural and technical security for our offices and information storage facilities so as to prevent any loss, misuse, unauthorised access, disclosure or modification of personal information. This also applies to disposal of personal information.

We will destroy or de-identify personal information once it is no longer needed for a valid purpose or required to be kept by law.

Direct marketing

From time to time, Smile Solutions may contact you with information about our products and services, offers, or information about our business partners. If you have chosen to register for email newsletters, Smile Solutions may use your email address to deliver additional information including about updates to the website, new loyalty offers, product launches, competitions, industry events and other such information.

You may opt out at any time if you no longer wish to receive commercial messages from us. You can make this request by contacting our Privacy Officer (see details below).

We will not disclose your personal information to third parties for marketing purposes without your consent.

Cookies

A cookie is a small text file stored in your computer’s memory or on your hard disk for a pre-defined period of time. We may use cookies from time to time to record non-personal information such as the date, time or duration of your visit, or the pages accessed, for website administration, statistical and maintenance purposes. The default settings of many browsers allow for cookies, but it is generally possible for users to erase cookies from their hard drive, block all cookies, or receive a warning before a cookie is stored. However, if you do any of these things you may not be able to access or use portions of the Smile Solutions website.

Cookies used on the Smile Solutions website do not and cannot infiltrate a user’s hard drive to gather any confidential information stored on the user’s hard drive.

The cookies used by our website are not ‘spyware’.

Smile Solutions will not use cookies or the anonymous web usage information it stores to identify you as an individual unless this is required by law.

Website users

Smile Solutions may provide links to third-party websites that may have privacy policies different from that of Smile Solutions. Smile Solutions is not responsible for the privacy policies of such third party websites and encourages you to read the privacy policies of every website you visit.

Smile Solutions, with the help of Google site statistics, monitors the visitors to the website www.smilesolutions.com.au. Based on your visit to this website, Google and third-party sites may elect to show you similar materials (content, advertising) that directs back to Smile Solutions.

The Smile Solutions website is hosted in Australia. If you use the Smile Solutions website from outside Australia, you are voluntarily transferring content (potentially including personally identifiable information) to Australia and agreeing that Smile Solutions’ collection, use, storage and sharing of that content is exclusively subject to the laws of Australia rather than the laws of the country in which you are located.

If you choose to provide Smile Solutions with personal information, you are consenting to the collection, use and disclosure of that information and to the transfer of that information to our servers in Australia and anywhere else in the world where Smile Solutions may in future have facilities and to its storage in those places.

Accessing and correcting your personal information

You may contact our Privacy Officer to request access to the personal information that we hold about you and/or to make corrections to that information, at any time. On the rare occasions when we refuse access, we will provide you with a written notice stating our reasons for refusing access. We may seek to recover from you reasonable costs incurred for providing you with access to any of the personal information about you held by us.

We are not obliged to correct any of your personal information if we do not agree that it requires correction and we may refuse to do so. If we refuse a correction request, we will provide you with a written notice stating our reasons for refusing.

We will respond to all requests for access to or correction of personal information within a reasonable time.

Overseas transfers of personal information

From time to time we may engage an overseas recipient to provide services to us, such as cloud-based storage solutions. If we do, we will take reasonable steps to protect your personal information the overseas provider holds against loss, misuse and from unauthorised access, modification or disclosure. By providing us with your personal information, you consent to the storage of such information on overseas servers.

Resolving personal information concerns

If you have any questions, concerns or complaints about this Privacy Policy, or how we handle your personal information, please contact us on the contact details below.

The Privacy Officer, Smile Solutions 1/220 Collins Street, Melbourne VIC 3000 Email: marketing@smilesolutions.com.au

We take all complaints seriously, and will respond to your complaint within a reasonable period. If you are dissatisfied with the handling of your complaint, you may contact the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner:

Office of the Australian Information Commissioner GPO Box 5218, Sydney NSW 2001 Telephone: 1300 363 992 Email: enquiries@oaic.gov.au

Update to this privacy policy

Smile Solutions may update this privacy policy from time to time in line with the need to accurately reflect its data collection and disclosure practices. An up-to-date copy of our Privacy Policy is available on our website. We encourage you to review this policy from time to time so you will know if it has been changed or updated.

This policy was last updated May 2024.

Plain-English summary of your rights

This section is explanatory and forms no part of the policy above. Where the two differ, the policy governs.

Dental records are health records, and health information is sensitive information under the Privacy Act — the most protected category. Three things follow that patients are rarely told:

1. You can ask for a copy of your own dental records. That includes clinical notes, radiographs and scans, photographs and treatment plans. A practice may charge a reasonable fee for providing access, but it may not refuse access simply because an account is unpaid.

2. Your records follow you. If you change dentists, or want a second opinion, you can ask for your records or radiographs to be sent to the new practitioner. A recent radiograph transferred is one you do not have to repeat — which matters, because every radiograph must be individually justified rather than taken by default.

3. Health records are kept for a long time. In Victoria, the Health Records Act 2001 requires health service providers to retain adult health records for at least seven years from the date of last service, and for a person under 18, until they turn 25. Ask before assuming an old record has been destroyed — it usually has not.

Where to complain, and to whom:

• About privacy or how your information was handled — the practice’s Privacy Officer first; then the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner (1300 363 992). In Victoria, the Health Complaints Commissioner also handles health-information complaints.
• About clinical care — the Health Complaints Commissioner in Victoria, or AHPRA nationally, where every practitioner’s registration and any conditions on it are public.
• About a health fund or a rebate — the Private Health Insurance Ombudsman.

These are separate bodies with separate powers. Sending a complaint to the wrong one costs months.

Common questions

How do I actually get a copy of my records, and what should I ask for?

Put the request in writing to the Privacy Officer at marketing@smilesolutions.com.au rather than asking at the front desk, so that the date of the request is on the record.

Then be specific, because “my records” means several different things and you will usually be sent what you named:

• Clinical notes, for a stated date range.
• Radiographs and scans — and ask for the original image files, not printouts or screen photographs. A picture of an X-ray is far less useful to the next clinician than the file itself.
• Intraoral photographs, if any were taken.
• The treatment plan and the itemised quote, which are the documents a second opinion needs most.
• The format you want: emailed, on a USB, posted, or sent directly to another practitioner.

The policy above sets the terms: a reasonable fee may be charged for providing access, refusals are described as rare and come with written reasons, and requests are answered “within a reasonable time”. If that time stretches with no explanation, the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner on 1300 363 992 is the body to raise it with.

One point worth making plainly: you are asking for a copy. The practice keeps the file, because it is required to. Requesting your records is an ordinary administrative act, not a hostile one and not notice that you are leaving — people do it for second opinions, for travel, for insurance, and simply because the records are about them.

Who else can see my dental records?

Fewer people than most patients assume — and the policy above draws one line that is easy to miss on a first read.

Clinicians involved in your care. The policy states that your information may be accessed by employees, dentists, dental specialists or others required to provide services to you. An internal referral — a general dentist passing a case to a colleague in the same building — sits inside that group, which is part of why referral here does not mean starting again elsewhere.

Health funds get less than you might think. The disclosure list includes “third party health benefit providers and insurance companies” and then qualifies it in the same line: sensitive health information will not be provided. What a fund is generally given is the item numbers claimed, not the contents of your notes. See Bupa Platinum Dental Provider for how the claiming side works.

Government and regulatory bodies including Medicare, where a claim or a legal obligation requires it — a Child Dental Benefits Schedule claim being the common example.

Related entities. Read the definition at the top of the policy: “Smile Solutions” is defined to include Core Dental Group Pty Ltd and P S Formula Pty Ltd and related bodies corporate. If that matters to you, it is a fair and answerable question to put to the Privacy Officer — ask which entity holds your file.

Your nominated emergency contact, which is a good reason to keep that detail current rather than leaving a number from three phones ago.

If there is something in your history you would rather was not repeated in a referral letter, raise it with the clinician before the letter is written. That is a routine conversation, not an awkward one.

I want the marketing emails to stop but I still want my appointment reminders. How do I do that?

Say exactly that, in those words, to the Privacy Officer at marketing@smilesolutions.com.au — opt out of commercial and promotional messages, keep clinical and appointment communication. The policy’s opt-out is written in terms of “commercial messages”, so naming the distinction yourself avoids being unsubscribed from the reminder that actually matters.

Two related things the policy says, which are worth knowing because they are not universal:

• “We will not disclose your personal information to third parties for marketing purposes without your consent.” That is a meaningful commitment, and it is the sentence to point at if you ever see your details somewhere you did not expect.
• Advertising you see elsewhere is a separate mechanism. The policy notes that, based on your visit to the website, Google and third-party sites may elect to show you similar materials. That is driven by cookies and your advertising settings, not by the practice’s mailing list — so unsubscribing from emails will not stop it, and clearing cookies or changing your ad settings will.

Is any of my information stored overseas?

The policy says two things here, and reading them together is the honest answer.

The website is hosted in Australia. That is stated directly.

Storage of your information is not guaranteed to stay here. The policy reserves the right to “engage an overseas recipient to provide services to us, such as cloud-based storage solutions”, undertakes to take reasonable steps to protect information such a provider holds, and treats your provision of personal information as consent to storage on overseas servers. The same clause elsewhere refers to servers “in Australia and anywhere else in the world where Smile Solutions may in future have facilities”.

A policy written to permit something is not evidence that it is happening. If this matters to you — and for health information some people reasonably decide it does — the useful question is the present-tense one: ask the Privacy Officer which overseas providers are currently used, and what categories of information sit with them. That is a question a practice can answer specifically, and the answer is more informative than the clause.

Related pages: Contact Us, Sitemap, Why Choose Us, Reviews, Our Team, Services, Price Guide.

Practical details

Smile Solutions, Level 1, 220 Collins Street, Manchester Unity Building, Melbourne VIC 3000. Phone 13 13 96, or theteam@smilesolutions.com.au. Monday–Friday 8.00am–6.00pm, Saturday 8.30am–1.30pm, Sunday by appointment.

Privacy enquiries go to the Privacy Officer at marketing@smilesolutions.com.au, not to the general enquiry address.

The summary section is general information, not legal advice. Retention periods and complaint pathways are set by legislation and change over time.

Smile Solutions trades under ABN 28 193 514 103.