How Complete Family Dental collects, uses, stores and protects your personal and health information.
Complete Family Dental, Quakers Hill NSW · Last updated: August 2026
We review this policy periodically to ensure it reflects our current information handling practices, and update it as needed, including as new privacy obligations come into effect.
Complete Family Dental is committed to safeguarding the personal information of our patients and staff. We handle personal and health information in accordance with the Privacy Act 1988 (Cth) and the Australian Privacy Principles (see the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner’s Guide to health privacy), the Health Records and Information Privacy Act 2002 (NSW) and the Health Privacy Principles it contains, and the standards set by the Dental Board of Australia and AHPRA.
We usually collect your personal and health information directly from you, for example when you book an appointment, complete a new patient form, or receive treatment. We may also collect information from other sources involved in your care, such as referring practitioners, specialists, dental laboratories, diagnostic imaging providers, or your health fund, where this is necessary to provide or coordinate your treatment.
We collect administrative information for the purposes of running the practice, including your name, phone number, contact and billing address, private health fund details and membership number, Medicare number (where required for government-funded programs), financial records of accounts and payments, insurance claims records, and any complaints. Financial records and records of work-related injuries are retained for a minimum of five years, as required by the Australian Taxation Office and NSW work health and safety legislation respectively.
We keep detailed clinical records including drug sensitivities, diagnostic tests, examination history, treatment provided, clinical advice given, referrals, and communications with dental laboratories and other practitioners, together with x-rays, photographs and other diagnostic images. This information helps us provide safe, appropriate and continuous care. We may obtain relevant history from other practitioners you’ve seen, or share information with other practitioners involved in your care, with your consent.
Your personal details are verified periodically and your treatment record is updated at each visit. We may add a note to a record retrospectively, but we do not alter what has already been recorded.
How long we keep clinical records. Under the Health Records and Information Privacy Act 2002 (NSW), we are required to retain your dental record for:
A list of what may form part of your clinical record is at Appendix 1.
We may discuss your treatment with other treating practitioners involved in your care. We may use de-identified information for teaching or quality-improvement purposes. Where treatment relates to an insurance claim, workers compensation matter, or a complaint, we may share relevant information with the insurer, their representatives, or lawyers acting on the matter, as required to progress that claim.
We will not adopt, use or disclose an identifier assigned by a government agency, except where use of a healthcare identifier is permitted under the Healthcare Identifiers Act 2010 (Cth), for example in connection with My Health Record.
You may request access to your own information, or ask us to correct it, at any time. We may decline a request where the Privacy Act, the HRIP Act, or other legislation gives us sound reason to do so, for example where release could pose a risk to your health or safety. We may charge a reasonable fee to cover the cost of retrieving and copying records. We aim to keep your information accurate, current and complete, and will take reasonable steps to correct information we hold that is wrong, or to dispose of information we no longer need.
You may use a pseudonym for emergency treatment paid in full at the time of the appointment. Anonymous treatment isn’t practical for ongoing care, where other practitioners or diagnostic records are involved, or for Medicare- or insurance-funded services. We may also decline to provide anonymous treatment where we have a legal obligation to report suspected child abuse, or where it’s impractical for managing risks such as substance dependence.
We take reasonable steps to protect your personal and health information against misuse, interference, loss, unauthorised access, modification or disclosure. This includes access controls on our clinical software, staff confidentiality obligations, and secure physical storage of any paper records. See Appendix 2 for more detail on how we handle information in our IT systems and on our website.
We do not send clinical or patient dental records overseas. All patient treatment records are stored with providers operating within Australia.
Our website does use third-party analytics and advertising tools, specifically Google Analytics and the Meta (Facebook/Instagram) Pixel, to help us understand how visitors use our site and to measure our advertising. These tools are provided by Google LLC and Meta Platforms, Inc. Browsing data collected through them (such as pages visited, device type, and how you arrived at our site) is processed on servers located in whichever country these providers currently operate, which at the time of writing is primarily the United States. This is limited to website analytics and advertising data; it does not include your clinical or patient records. Google’s and Meta’s own privacy policies govern how they handle this data once it’s disclosed to them, and we encourage you to review those if you’d like more detail or to confirm current server locations.
If you’d prefer not to be tracked this way, most browsers let you block third-party cookies, or you can use Google’s opt-out tools directly.
If we become aware of a data breach involving your personal information that is likely to result in serious harm, we will assess the breach and, where required under the Notifiable Data Breaches scheme in the Privacy Act, notify you and the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner in accordance with our legal obligations.
We may send you SMS or email appointment reminders, recall notices, and information about the practice. You can opt out of marketing communications at any time by telling any member of our team, or by using the unsubscribe option in an email. Opting out will not affect clinical reminders necessary for your ongoing care unless you ask us to stop these as well.
If you have a complaint about how we’ve handled your personal or health information, please put it in writing to:
Business Manager, Complete Family Dental
Email: info@completefamilydental.com.au
Phone: (02) 9626 2033
We will acknowledge your complaint and aim to respond within a reasonable time, usually no more than 30 days. If you’re not satisfied with our response, or haven’t heard back within that time, you can take your complaint further to:
We sometimes send clinical information electronically, for example when referring you to a specialist. We take reasonable steps to protect this information in transit and manage our IT systems to prevent data loss. Where data is stored off-site (such as in cloud-based practice management or hosting services), we only use providers whose handling of data is consistent with the Australian Privacy Principles.
Our website. Our website uses cookies and similar technologies, including Google Analytics for site analytics and the Meta (Facebook/Instagram) Pixel for advertising measurement, to help us understand how visitors use our site and to measure the performance of our advertising. These tools collect information such as browser type, pages visited, and how you arrived at our site, and this information is sent to Google LLC and Meta Platforms, Inc., currently processed primarily in the United States (see “Where your information is stored” above for detail). This browsing information is separate from, and does not include, your clinical or patient records. Use of these tools is governed by the privacy policies of the relevant provider (Google’s and Meta’s own privacy policies) as well as this policy.
We will only collect your email address if you send us a message or otherwise provide it to us. We will not share it, or use it for a purpose other than the one you provided it for, without your consent. If we would like to send you information about the practice, we will seek your consent and you may opt out at any time.
