Question:  I want to move to another dental practitioner and my current practitioner won’t give me my records.  Where do I stand?

Answer:  Dental records are generally the property of the dental practitioner who created them.  Written records created by the practitioner and x-rays taken by the practitioner have been held in the courts to be the property of the practitioner.  Where a patient obtains an x-ray from a provider external to the dentist and then presents that x-ray to the dentist for retention, the position is less clear. Generally, however, the x-ray in this situation is the property of the patient.

Under the Privacy Act 1988, however, you have a right to inspect the dentist’s records of your treatment and you have the right to request the dentist to provide you with a copy of those records.  A reasonable time must be allowed for the copying of the records and a reasonable fee may be charged by the dentist for the copying.  There is nothing in the privacy legislation that specifies how a reasonable fee will be determined, however, the Board has been advised by the Office of the Federal Privacy Commissioner that such a fee can include the dentist’s direct costs in copying records including x-rays and a fee for Staff time in undertaking or arranging those copies.