Website Privacy Policy

Consent to Use and Store Personal Health Information

At all Greater Vancouver Orthodontics clinics, we are committed to ensuring a professional, safe, and trusted office environment. To provide you with optimized oral healthcare 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 healthcare 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 is trained on the importance of keeping your information safe, secure, and confidential.

You can reach us by telephone through any of our Greater Vancouver Orthodontics clinics or by email using the form below should you have any questions or concerns. We appreciate your feedback.

Privacy Policy Consent Form

First Name *

Last Name *

Email Address

Preferred Location *

Acknowledgement *

By checking this box and submitting this form, I confirm I have received and agree to the Greater Vancouver Orthodontics Privacy Policy.

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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 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. First, we only collect, use and disclose information about you for the following purposes:

To deliver safe and efficient patient care
To ensure high-quality service
To assess your health needs
To advise you of treatment options
To establish and maintain communication with you, including scheduling and reminding you of appointments
To enable us to contact you
To communicate with other healthcare providers, including specialists and general dentists involved, in your care
To allow us to efficiently 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 credit card, cash, and personal cheque payments
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 comply with regulatory requirements and the law generally
In the event that a decision to sell the practice is made:
To permit potential purchasers to evaluate the dental practice
To allow potential purchasers to conduct an audit in preparation for a sale

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.

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 that 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 that meet Canadian legal standards and requirements for storage and protection of personal health information.

We may also share aggregated and non-identifiable data with research institutions or third-party providers to advance oral healthcare. This is explicitly permitted by legislation as it poses minimal to no risk to patients but has the potential to greatly enhance healthcare 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.

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 healthcare services we deliver and to administer our dental offices more effectively.

In addition to the independent duty of each healthcare provider to respect and safeguard your privacy rights, our orthodontists and healthcare providers partner with Dr. Larry Podolsky Dental Corporation, which is, among other things, our designated corporate custodian for patient health information. We also contract with Dentalcorp Health Services, Ltd. (“DHS”), which acts as our designated Information Manager in addition to providing technical services to our office.

As Information Manager, DHS utilizes the 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.

Google Analytics

We use Google Analytics’ third-party audience data, such as age, gender and interests, to better understand the behaviour of our customers and work with companies that collect information about your online activities to provide advertising targeted to suit your interests and preferences. For example, you may see certain ads on this website or other websites because we contract with Google and other similar companies to target our ads based on information we or they have collected, including information that was collected through automated means (such as cookies and web beacons). These companies also use automated technologies to collect information when you click on our ads, which helps track and manage the effectiveness of our marketing efforts.

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 edit or opt-out your Google Display Network ads’ preferences at http://www.google.com/ads/preferences.

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, “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:

Opt-out of Google’s use of cookies by visiting Google’s Ads Settings
Opt-out of a third-party vendors' use of cookies by visiting the Network Advertising Initiative opt-out page
Opt-out information for Facebook ads is available at: https://www.facebook.com/help/568137493302217