Dental treatment plans and AI data leakage: what a treatment plan and quote give away in ChatGPT or Claude.

The treatment plan and quote is the document a dentist hands over before anything expensive happens, and the one front-desk staff most often paste into ChatGPT or Claude to explain in plain English or turn into a friendlier email. It carries the patient’s identity, what is wrong with each tooth, the medical alerts that affect treatment, every fee and the health fund rebate estimate, and often a remark about how the patient will pay. This page marks every item in a routine plan that the Privacy Act, NSW health records law and the Dental Board’s Code of conduct bear on, and shows how the same plan is prepared on Ermos inside the practice.

The treatment plan and quote

Prepared after the examination and before treatment starts. The Code of conduct (section 4.2, item 5) asks practitioners to get financial consent by discussing fees in a manner appropriate to the professional relationship and to get general agreement about the level of treatment to be provided, preferably before the service is provided. Item 7 asks them to document consent appropriately.

Treatment plan and fee estimate
Tallowwood Dental, Lane Cove NSW · Dr Anika Rao⁸ · 12 October 2026

Patient	Mrs Gwen Abernethy, DOB 11 June 1968, 14 Banksia Place, Lane Cove NSW 2066¹
Medical alerts	Type 2 diabetes (metformin), HbA1c 7.4. Osteoporosis, on alendronate since 2021, so avoid extractions and implants where possible.³
Findings	Tooth 46: failed root filling with a periapical lesion and a vertical crack into the pulp floor. Teeth 14 and 25: leaking amalgam with recurrent decay. Generalised 5 mm pockets, bleeding on probing, signs of night-time grinding.²
Proposed treatment	1. Referral for endodontic retreatment of 46 (specialist fee separate). 2. Porcelain crown 46, $2,180. 3. Composite fillings 14 and 25, $640. 4. Gum treatment, four visits, $1,420. 5. Night guard, $620. Total payable to this practice: $4,860.⁴
Health fund	Kestrel Health Fund, member HF 000 000 000, Extras Top. Estimated rebate $1,150, subject to the fund’s annual limit of $1,800, of which $350 has been used this year.⁵
Payment	Patient asked to pay in three instalments. She said she has been between jobs since August and her husband does not yet know the full cost.⁶
Terms	This estimate is valid for 90 days. Fees may change if treatment changes. Please ask us any questions about cost before you agree to proceed.⁷
Accepted	Gwen Abernethy, signed 12 October 2026. Explained by Dr Rao; patient given time to ask questions.⁹

An invented treatment plan. The practice, patient and health fund are fictional and the member number is a placeholder. Hover or tap any highlighted item for the analysis; the full list is below.

What leaves the practice

The patient

A full name, date of birth and home address. Personal information under the Privacy Act and, because it is collected in providing a health service, health information. The key that ties every item below to a real person. 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

Findings, tooth by tooth

The state of a named person’s mouth, including a lesion and signs of grinding. Part of the clinical record the Code of conduct (section 8.3) expects to be accurate and held securely, and health information under the Privacy Act. Patient data guide.

Frontier Models (ChatGPT, Claude)	A named patient’s clinical findings 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

Medical alerts

Diabetes, osteoporosis and a named medication, recorded because they change how treatment is done. Health information is sensitive information under the Privacy Act, with stricter rules on use and disclosure. 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; a permitted excerpt can still go, per question, to the named Australian provider
Ermos Dominion	Stays on the unit in your office

Proposed treatment and fees

What the practice proposes and what it will charge. The work the patient is paying for, and information the patient is entitled to have before agreeing under the financial consent expectations in section 4.2 of the Code.

Frontier Models (ChatGPT, Claude)	Treatment and fees transmitted before the patient has decided
Ermos Edge	Stays on your instance; a permitted excerpt may go to the named Australian provider, and a person must still check every total against the fee schedule
Ermos Dominion	Stays on the unit, but a person must still check every total against the fee schedule

Health fund details and rebate estimate

A member number, a plan level and how much of the annual limit is used. Personal information that identifies the patient to the fund, and a number with a use in claims and in fraud. Privacy Act guide.

Frontier Models (ChatGPT, Claude)	A fund member number 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

A patient’s money worries and a confidence about her husband

A job loss and a private concern about what her husband knows. Not clinical, but recorded in the file and personal to her. A confidence the patient gave to the practice. Privacy Act guide.

Frontier Models (ChatGPT, Claude)	A private worry and a confidence 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 standard terms
Generic wording about validity and questions. The Code asks for financial consent to be discussed; this paragraph is the practice’s template and says nothing about any patient.
8
The practice and the dentist
A named practice and a registered dentist bound by the Code of conduct. Public information, but it ties a leaked plan to the practice.

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

Frontier Models (ChatGPT, Claude)	Public details, though they tie the plan to the practice
Ermos Edge	Public details, nothing to protect
Ermos Dominion	Public details, nothing to protect

The signed acceptance

The record that the patient was given time and agreed. Section 4.2 item 7 asks practitioners to document consent appropriately; this is the practice’s evidence if the fee is later disputed.

Frontier Models (ChatGPT, Claude)	The signed consent record 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

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. See how this works in practice: Treatment plans on Ermos.

Common questions

Do ChatGPT and Claude use the information in a dental treatment plan and quote?

Yes, a pasted treatment plan 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 plan carries a patient's date of birth, diabetes and osteoporosis medication, a health fund member number and a remark that her husband does not yet know the full cost.

Is it safe to paste a dental treatment plan into ChatGPT or Claude if we remove the patient's name?

No, because the plan still points to one woman. 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 Lane Cove home address, a date of birth, a fund member number and a failed root filling on tooth 46 each narrow it to her. Her diabetes, osteoporosis and findings are 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 be trusted to draft a dental treatment plan and quote?

Not without a dentist checking every line. Language models can produce fluent text with details that are not in the source, wrong figures, wrong dates or references that look real but are not. In this plan the costliest errors would be a wrong fee, a total that differs from the real $4,860, a wrong rebate estimate or a missing diabetes and osteoporosis alert. The treating dentist should check each item against the patient record and the fee schedule.

How can a dental practice use AI for a treatment plan and quote 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 plan is drafted from the patient record and the practice's own treatment plan template. The dentist checks every finding and total against the fee schedule and signs it.

Why does a treatment plan need special care?

Because it combines three kinds of information in one page: the clinical findings, the medical history that changes treatment, and the money. Under the Privacy Act the clinical and medical parts are health information, and the financial parts are personal information about a named patient. Pasting it into an AI tool sends all three together.

What does the Dental Board's Code say about quoting fees?

Section 4.2 of the Code of conduct asks practitioners to get financial consent by discussing fees in a manner appropriate to the professional relationship, and to get general agreement about the level of treatment, preferably before the service is provided. It also asks them to document consent appropriately. The plan is the practice's record of that conversation.

Can AI check the totals on a quote?

It can add up a list, but the dentist remains responsible for the figures and for what the patient was told. Ahpra's AI guidance says practitioners must apply human judgment to AI output. On Ermos the draft is produced on your own systems from your fee schedule, and a person still checks it before it is given to the patient.

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