Dental complaint responses and AI confidentiality: what a patient complaint letter gives away in ChatGPT or Claude.

A complaint response is the letter a practice writes when it is most worried about getting the words wrong, so it is exactly what gets pasted into ChatGPT or Claude to be made calmer, clearer or more careful. It carries the patient’s name and address, what she complained about, the clinical background, her financial circumstances, what the staff said, what the practice is offering and her right to go to the regulator. This page marks every item in a routine response that the Privacy Act, NSW health records law and the Dental Board’s Code of conduct bear on, and shows how the same letter is drafted on Ermos inside the practice.

The patient complaint response

Sent after a patient complains, usually within days. Section 4.6 of the Code of conduct asks practitioners to work with the patient to resolve the issue, locally where possible, and to ensure the complaint does not adversely affect the patient’s care.

Tallowwood Dental
Shop 4, 17 Wombat Lane, Lane Cove NSW 2066 · 2 November 2026

Mrs Gwen Abernethy
14 Banksia Place, Lane Cove NSW 2066¹

Dear Mrs Abernethy,

Your concern about the endodontic fee. Thank you for telling us on 30 October that you were not warned about the specialist’s fee. I am sorry for the distress this has caused, and I have looked into what happened.

Your treatment plan of 12 October set out that the root canal retreatment of tooth 46 would be done by a specialist whose fee was separate from ours. On the day you booked, our receptionist gave you a verbal estimate of about $1,000. Dr Venkatesan’s fee was $1,480.²

Your tooth needed retreatment because the 2019 root filling had failed and there was a probable vertical root fracture. Dr Venkatesan treated it on 28 October and has advised that the tooth is restorable. Your crown is booked for 5 November.³

You told us that you have been out of work since August and that the unexpected cost matters a great deal to you.⁴ Our receptionist, Josh, should not have given an estimate for a fee we do not set. I have spoken with him and we are changing how we answer this question.⁶

What we are offering. We will credit $300 against the cost of your crown, and you may pay the remaining fee in three equal instalments with no charge. This is offered without admission of liability.⁵

We have notified our professional indemnity insurer, Southern Dental Mutual, as we do with all written complaints.⁸

If you are not satisfied. You are welcome to contact me directly. You may also contact the Health Care Complaints Commission, which deals with complaints about health service providers in NSW. Your care here will not be affected by your complaint.⁷

Yours sincerely,
Dr Anika Rao, Principal Dentist, Tallowwood Dental⁹

An invented letter. The practice, staff, patient, specialist and insurer are fictional. Hover or tap any highlighted item for the analysis; the full list is below.

What leaves the practice

The patient and her address

A name and home address in the heading of a letter about a health service she received. Personal information, and health information as it is collected in providing a health service. Patient data guide.

Frontier Models (ChatGPT, Claude)	Transmitted to the provider, generally offshore on personal plans
Ermos Edge	Stays on your instance in Australia; leaves only inside a permitted excerpt, per question, to the named provider
Ermos Dominion	Stays on the unit in your office

The substance of the complaint

What the patient was told, what was quoted and what was charged. The core of a complaint file, and a record of the practice’s own fee communication under section 4.2 of the Code.

Frontier Models (ChatGPT, Claude)	A complaint and the practice’s fee communication transmitted
Ermos Edge	Stays on your instance in Australia; leaves only inside a permitted excerpt, per question, to the named provider
Ermos Dominion	Stays on the unit in your office

The clinical background

A failed root filling, a probable fracture, the specialist’s treatment and the date of the next appointment. Clinical detail in a letter that is not a clinical document. Health information under the Privacy Act. Patient data guide.

Frontier Models (ChatGPT, Claude)	Sensitive health information transmitted; on consumer tiers it can train future models
Ermos Edge	Stays on your instance in Australia; leaves only inside a permitted excerpt, per question, to the named provider
Ermos Dominion	Stays on the unit in your office

The patient’s circumstances

Unemployment and what the cost means to her. Personal information volunteered in confidence, now quoted back. Privacy Act guide.

Frontier Models (ChatGPT, Claude)	A patient’s job loss transmitted
Ermos Edge	Stays on your instance in Australia; leaves only inside a permitted excerpt, per question, to the named provider
Ermos Dominion	Stays on the unit in your office

The offer

A credit, an instalment arrangement and a statement that there is no admission. The practice’s negotiating position, decided by the principal.

Frontier Models (ChatGPT, Claude)	A settlement position transmitted before it is sent
Ermos Edge	Stays on your instance; the principal must still decide the offer and review the wording
Ermos Dominion	Stays on the unit; the principal must still decide the offer and review the wording

A staff member and what he said

A named employee and a statement about his mistake. Information about an employee, and an account of what was done about it. Privacy Act guide.

Frontier Models (ChatGPT, Claude)	A named employee’s mistake transmitted
Ermos Edge	Stays on your instance in Australia; leaves only inside a permitted excerpt, per question, to the named provider
Ermos Dominion	Stays on the unit in your office

7
The patient’s rights and the regulator
A paragraph about contacting the practice or the Health Care Complaints Commission. The HCCC deals with complaints about health service providers in NSW; this is public information and the practice’s standard wording.

Frontier Models (ChatGPT, Claude)	Public information and standard wording; sending it exposes nothing
Ermos Edge	Nothing patient-specific to protect
Ermos Dominion	Nothing patient-specific to protect

The practice’s indemnity insurer

The name of the practice’s insurer and that it has been notified. Commercial information about the practice, and a fact an opposing party would want.

Frontier Models (ChatGPT, Claude)	The practice’s insurer and notification transmitted
Ermos Edge	Stays on your instance in Australia; leaves only inside a permitted excerpt, per question, to the named provider
Ermos Dominion	Stays on the unit in your office

The signatory

A named principal dentist, bound by the Code of conduct. The person who owns the response and what it commits the practice to.

Frontier Models (ChatGPT, Claude)	Transmitted, and the leak is traceable to the practice
Ermos Edge	Stays on your instance; the principal signs and owns the response
Ermos Dominion	Stays on the unit; the principal signs and owns the response

What happens in Frontier Models (ChatGPT, Claude)

The whole document is transmitted to the provider’s servers. On personal plans the user cannot choose where it is stored or processed, and for the major providers that has generally meant outside Australia, under that country’s legal process. Some business plans offer storage in Australia, but the provider still receives the content.
On consumer tiers, prompts can be retained and used to train future models.
The provider’s staff and systems can reach the content under the provider’s own policies.
Once sent, the practice no longer controls it. Retention and deletion happen on the provider’s terms.

The same document on Ermos

Ermos Dominion

The document is drafted on a unit in your office, from your own templates and the patient record. Every marked item stays on the unit, which keeps working with the internet switched off. Nothing in it is transmitted to an AI provider, so there is no disclosure to analyse: the confidentiality work is the same as for your file server.

Ermos Edge

Your documents, the index and your access boundaries stay on your own instance in an Australian data centre. When a staff member asks for this draft, only their question and the excerpts they are permitted to see go to a named Australian provider, who is contractually barred from keeping the content or training any model on it. Nothing is processed outside Australia.

	Frontier Models (ChatGPT, Claude)	Ermos Edge	Ermos Dominion
Where the document is processed	Provider servers, generally offshore on personal plans	Your instance in an Australian data centre; answers generated in Australia	The unit in your office
Who can read it	Provider staff and systems, under policy	Your staff, within the boundaries you set. The named Australian provider processes only permitted excerpts, under contract, and keeps nothing	Your staff only
Is it kept	On the provider’s terms	Kept on your instance; the provider is barred from retaining it	Stays on the unit
Can it train a model	On consumer tiers, yes	No, by contract	Only your own unit learns from it, on your hardware

Part of AI data leakage in dental practices.

Common questions

Do ChatGPT and Claude use the information in a patient complaint response?

Yes, a pasted complaint response is sent to the AI company's servers and processed there to produce a reply. As at October 2026, whether a conversation on a personal plan (ChatGPT Free, Plus or Pro; Claude Free, Pro or Max) can be used to train the models depends on a setting each user controls. Business plans (ChatGPT Business and Enterprise, Claude Team and Enterprise) and the developer APIs sit under commercial terms, and OpenAI and Anthropic each say they do not train on that content by default (OpenAI, Anthropic). On either product, the thumbs up and thumbs down buttons can send a whole conversation back for training. This letter sets out a failed root filling, a $300 credit offer, an instalment plan, the name of the practice's indemnity insurer and a receptionist's mistake.

Is it safe to paste a patient complaint response into ChatGPT or Claude if we remove the patient's name?

No, because the complaint itself identifies her. Removing names rarely makes a document anonymous. Information stays personal information while the person is reasonably identifiable, and the OAIC warns that information can be at risk of re-identification even when it has been de-identified or anonymised. A specialist fee of $1,480 against a verbal estimate of about $1,000, a failed 2019 root filling on tooth 46 and a crown booked for 5 November describe one patient. The clinical background is health information, which is sensitive information under the Privacy Act. The Office of the Australian Information Commissioner (OAIC) recommends in its guidance on commercially available AI products that organisations do not enter personal information, and particularly sensitive information, into publicly available generative AI tools, because of the significant and complex privacy risks.

Can ChatGPT or Claude remember the details in a patient complaint response later?

It depends on the settings each user chooses. Both products also have memory features that can carry details from one conversation into later ones, and on a personal account each user decides whether they are switched on (ChatGPT, Claude). A pasted complaint letter could carry the patient's unemployment, the credit offer and the staff member's mistake into a later conversation about another complaint. Those details belong to one patient's complaint file.

How can a dental practice use AI for a patient complaint response without sending it to ChatGPT or Claude?

Ermos is built so the document stays under your control. On the Dominion AI unit it is drafted inside your office and none of it is sent to an AI provider. On Ermos Edge your documents and index stay on your own instance in an Australian data centre, and only the question and the excerpts the user is permitted to see go to a named Australian provider that is contractually barred from keeping them or training any model on them. The letter is drafted from the complaint file and the practice's own complaint response template. The principal dentist checks every fact and the offer and signs it.

Who deals with a complaint about a dental practice in NSW?

The practice can respond directly, and section 4.6 of the Code of conduct asks practitioners to work with the patient to resolve the issue, locally where possible. A patient may also go to the Health Care Complaints Commission, which deals with complaints about health service providers in NSW. Either way the practice's records need to stay accurate and in its own control.

Why is a complaint response sensitive beyond the patient's health?

Because it combines the patient's information with the practice's position: what it admits, what it offers, which staff member made the mistake and who has been told. The practice may later need to rely on the letter. It is a document whose drafting history should stay inside the practice.

Can a practice use AI to soften a complaint letter?

Tone is a reasonable thing to ask for, and the Code does not forbid it. The dentist remains responsible for what the letter says and commits the practice to, and Ahpra says practitioners must apply human judgment to AI output. The question is whether the patient's details and the practice's position are sent to a third party to get there.

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