Privacy Policy

Our approach to privacy

This policy covers the Crystal Dental website and describes the proposed handling of personal information connected with inquiries and dental care at our Burnaby Metrotown and Langley Willowbrook clinics. Personal information is information about an identifiable person, including their contact details and dental or medical history.

British Columbia’s Personal Information Protection Act (PIPA) is the principal private-sector privacy law for our BC operations. Federal privacy law may also apply to certain activities involving information crossing provincial or national borders. Learn how provincial and federal privacy laws fit together.

Information connected with your care

Depending on your inquiry and the care you receive, relevant information may include:

• Contact and appointments: your name, contact details, preferred clinic, appointment arrangements and messages to the team.
• Dental care: health history, medications, allergies, examination findings, X-rays, treatment records, consent discussions and referrals.
• Billing and coverage: estimates, invoices, payments and insurance or Canadian Dental Care Plan (CDCP) details needed to administer your care and claims.

The purposes are to answer inquiries, arrange visits, provide and coordinate treatment, communicate about your care, manage accounts and authorized benefit claims, and meet professional or legal obligations.

Consent and sharing information

Information should be collected, used and shared for explained, reasonable purposes, with appropriate consent or other lawful authority. Depending on your care, necessary information may be shared with treating or referring professionals, dental laboratories, insurers or CDCP administrators, and providers supporting clinic operations. Disclosures may also be required or permitted by law.

You can ask why information is needed, discuss communication preferences, or request to limit or withdraw consent, subject to legal requirements and reasonable notice. The team should explain any effect this may have on care or billing. Visiting this website is not blanket consent to unrelated marketing or use of your health information.

For children or someone represented by another person, authority to consent or obtain records must be checked. A child’s ability to understand the decision also matters; being a family member does not automatically authorize access to another person’s information.

Contacting us safely

The website currently directs appointment inquiries to the clinics by phone or email; it does not process online payments, accept patient file uploads or provide a patient portal. Contact the clinic to confirm how to use any available text-messaging service.

Ordinary email, text messages and social-media messages are not a secure patient portal. Please do not send credit-card details, identification documents or detailed health records through these channels. Call first to arrange an appropriate way to share sensitive information or request records. For urgent dental concerns, please call your preferred clinic rather than waiting for an email reply.

Website privacy, cookies and outside services

• Technical information: hosting and security services may process IP addresses, browser or device information, requested pages and access or error logs to deliver and protect the website.
• Cookies and browser storage: WordPress uses cookies for authorized staff login and administration. Basic display features may use browser storage; WordPress emoji support can also load assets from WordPress.org infrastructure. You can manage cookies and site data in your browser, although disabling them may affect some features.
• Google Maps: our contact and location pages contain embedded maps. When a map loads, your browser connects to Google, which may receive your IP address, browser information and other technical data and may use cookies. This can happen without clicking the map. See Google’s Privacy Policy. For directions without loading a map page, call either clinic using the numbers in the footer.
• Reviews and social links: reviews displayed on this site are saved website content rather than a live Google review feed. Links to Google, Facebook and Instagram take you to services governed by their own privacy policies. Avoid putting private health information in a public review or comment.
• Analytics and advertising: the reviewed local site has no Google Analytics or Meta advertising pixel installed. Any analytics, advertising, booking or payment service added for launch needs a fresh privacy review, updated disclosure and appropriate consent controls.

Third-party services may process information outside British Columbia or Canada, where different laws apply. Please contact the clinic with questions about a particular provider or where your information is processed.

Protection and retention

Personal information requires safeguards suited to its sensitivity, including controls over who can access it and how it is stored, transferred and disposed of. No online communication method can guarantee complete security. If you suspect information has been lost, misdirected or accessed without permission, please contact the clinic promptly.

Dental records are subject to professional and legal retention requirements and may need to be kept for many years after treatment. Withdrawing consent or leaving the practice does not automatically allow immediate deletion. Information should be securely destroyed or de-identified when it is no longer needed and retention is no longer required. See the BC College of Oral Health Professionals’ recordkeeping guidance.

Accessing and correcting your information

You may request access to your personal information and ask for inaccurate or incomplete information to be corrected. You may also ask how it has been used and to whom it has been disclosed, subject to legal exceptions. Contact your clinic to arrange a written request and an appropriate way to verify your identity or authority to act for someone else. Please do not email identification documents without first arranging a suitable method.

PIPA generally requires a response to an access request within 30 business days, subject to permitted extensions and legal exceptions. If access is limited, the response should explain the applicable reason and your review rights. A permitted access fee may apply; any required estimate should be provided in advance. Corrections to clinical records may need to preserve the original entry rather than erase it. Read the BC privacy commissioner’s guide to requesting records.

For privacy-related requests, call 604-431-0431 (Burnaby) or 778-366-2654 (Langley) and ask reception to direct you to the person responsible for privacy.

Keeping this policy current

This draft was prepared on October 29, 2026. Before launch, it should be checked against the clinic’s actual practices and the final hosted website, then given an approved effective date. Future changes to information collection, providers or website features should be reflected here, with additional notice or consent where required.