Dear Valued Patient
Thank you for trusting us to look after your oral health care needs. We consider it a privilege to care for you and we always work hard to maintain your trust and confidence. Part of maintaining your trust means ensuring you know about our practice and how we utilize and safeguard your personal health information.
A little bit about our practice
At Forest Hill Children's Dentistry, we are committed to ensuring a professional, safe, and trusted office environment. All clinical dentistry services are performed by dental professionals in good standing with Royal College of Dental Surgeons of Ontario and all clinical hygiene services are performed by registrants in good standing with the College of Dental Hygienists of Ontario.
To provide you with optimized oral health care and excellent service we use, store, and analyze certain personal health information that we (a) collect from you, (b) generate through diagnostic testing and treatment planning, or (c) receive from your other health care providers.
We will not collect, disclose, or use any of your information without your knowledge or consent. Only persons with a clinical (or related administrative) need to know a piece of information will be granted access to that information. In the same vein we embrace the principle that only the necessary amount of information shall be disclosed for any task or function. Our staff are trained on the importance of keeping your information safe, secure, and confidential.
Our designated privacy officer can be reached at privacy.officer@dentalcorp.ca should you have any questions or concerns. We appreciate your feedback.
Below you will find our office’s privacy policy. By signing, you acknowledge that you have read and understood the information provided in the policy and that you consent to the practices it describes. Feel free to ask us any questions you might have.
Thank you very much for the privilege of assisting you with your oral healthcare needs. We look forward to caring for your smile.
What information do we collect?
There are a few categories of information we normally collect. The first is personal information such as name, address, other contact information, insurance information, and financial/billing information, which may include credit card numbers and other such information. To the extent we collect credit card information, it is done in compliance with Payment Card Industry Data Security Standards (PCI DSS).
We also collect and generate personal health information including such things as:
- Medical and dental history
- Medications
- Dental history
- Records of dental visits, recall exams, and appointment scheduling
- Results of diagnosis and testing
- Study models, odontograms and impressions
- Treatment recommendations, treatment plans and progress notes
- Records of consent conversations and when appropriate, signed consent forms
- Referral/Specialists reports and recommendations
How do we use your information?
We believe it is important that you know how we use your information. To that end, we only collect, use, and disclose information about you for the following purposes:
- To deliver safe and effective patient care
- To ensure high-quality service
- To provide you with information about services offered at our clinic
- To establish and maintain communication with you, including to schedule and remind you of appointments and to inform you of changes to our office policies or hours
- To communicate with other healthcare providers, including specialists and general dentists involved in your care
- To allow us to monitor and follow-up for treatment, care, and billing
- For teaching and demonstrating purposes on an anonymous basis
- To complete and submit dental claims and estimates for third party adjudication and payment
- To comply with legal and regulatory requirements, including communication with the provincial dental regulator, privacy commissioner or any statutory review board as required under legislation
- To comply with a court order in the event of legal proceedings
- To invoice for goods and services, to process payments, and to collect unpaid accounts
- To send you surveys relating to our business and services
- For internal management purposes, such as resource planning, policy development, quality assurance, and human resource management
- To allow third parties to evaluate the dental clinic and conduct an audit.
While the above list is rather long, we believe it better to be over-inclusive. Many of the items listed above are unlikely to apply to you.
Before personal information is used or disclosed for a purpose not previously identified, we will advise you of this new purpose or disclosure and will only proceed with your consent.
Electronic Communication
When we communicate with you, we may communicate via electronic means, such as e-mail or SMS text message. We strive to ensure that our Commercial Electronic Messages (“CEMs”) are sent with consent, identifying information and unsubscribe mechanisms. We require all CEMs from our Office to be in compliance with privacy and anti-SPAM laws. If and when we communicate with you using CEMs, you can opt out of receiving such messages by following the “Unsubscribe” link included at the bottom of such messages or by contacting our office practice manager. If our Office inadvertently sends out a CEM without consent, we commit to investigating every such instance and assisting the employee(s) or managers involved with renewing their understanding and awareness of our compliance responsibilities.
How is your information stored and who has access to it?
Your information may be kept in physical form (files, models, etc.) in which case it is either guarded by staff or stored in a locked and secure file cabinet or safe. Digital information may be stored on encrypted file servers in secure/access-controlled locations. Digital information is password protected and stored on systems which save audit trails in the event unauthorized access must be investigated. Our systems are protected by industry standard IT security hardware and software measures.
We may enter into agreements with third-party providers specializing in data storage and protection. Sometimes that data is securely stored in the cloud, which may include locations outside of Canada. In those instances, only persons contractually obligated to secure and protect your data will be able to access that data. We will only enter into contractual agreements with providers which meet Canadian legal standards and requirements for storage and protection of personal health information.
We may also share aggregate and non-identifiable data with research institutions or third-party providers to advance oral health care. This is explicitly permitted by legislation as it poses minimal to no risk to patients but has the potential to greatly enhance health care effectiveness. We will only share such data with persons or providers who enter into the necessary agreements to keep information confidential and to safeguard and protect such data.
Your health information is stored for the minimum retention periods as required by applicable law or regulation, after which, it is either destroyed or made anonymous.
We work with experts to further protect your information
To meet the complex and ever-changing requirements of dental practice and practice administration, we partner with experts to improve the heath care services we deliver and to administer our dental offices more effectively.
In addition to the independent duty of each health care provider to respect and safeguard your privacy rights, our dentists and health care providers partner with Dr. Larry Podolsky Dentistry Professional Corporation which, among other things, is our designated corporate custodian for patient health information. Dentalcorp Health Services, Ltd. (“DHS”) acts as our designated Information Manager in addition to providing technical services to our office.
As Information Manager, DHS utilizes best industry standards and technology along with a robust cybersecurity program to protect patient privacy and to ensure compliance with all local and federal laws.
For Users of Our Online Services
Google Ads
We use the online advertising program Google Ads (including enhanced conversions for web). Google Ads enables us to display ads in the Google search engine or on third-party websites, if the user enters certain search terms into Google. For conversion tracking, the information about your use of this website (e.g. IP address) and submitted through our forms (e.g. email address, name, and/or phone number) is transmitted to Google where it will be used to evaluate your use of the website.
For more information, visit Google’s data protection policy at https://policies.google.com/privacy?hl=en.
You may opt out of the automated collection of information by third-party ad networks for the purpose of delivering advertisements tailored to your interests, by visiting the consumer opt-out page for the Self-Regulatory Principles for Online Behavioural Advertising at http://www.aboutads.info/choices/ and you can edit or opt out of personalized and non personalized ads by visiting http://www.google.com/ads/preferences/.
Google Analytics
Google Analytics is used to help us gather and analyze information about the areas visited on the Website and improve the user experience and the Website. These third parties may use cookies and other tracking technologies.
For more information about Google Analytics or to prevent the storage and processing of this data (including your IP address) by Google, you can download and install the browser plug-in available at the following link: https://tools.google.com/dlpage/gaoptout?hl=en.
You can also obtain additional information on Google Analytics’ data privacy and security by visiting https://policies.google.com/technologies/partner-sites and https://support.google.com/analytics/topic/2919631.
Remarketing
We use Remarketing to advertise our practice across the Internet. Remarketing will display ads to you based on what parts of our website you have viewed by placing a cookie on your web browser. This cookie does not in any way identify you or give access to your computer or mobile device. The cookie is used to indicate to other websites that “this person visited a particular page, so show them ads relating to that page.” Remarketing allows us to tailor our marketing to better suit your needs and only display ads that are relevant to you. If you do not wish to see ads from us, you can opt out in several ways:
1. Opt out of Google’s use of cookies by visiting Google’s Ads Settings
2. Opt out of a third-party vendor’s use of cookies by visiting the Network Advertising Initiative opt-out page (https://optout.networkadvertising.org/)
3. Opt out information for Facebook ads visit: https://www.facebook.com/help/568137493302217