Towcester Vets - Privacy policy

Your privacy is extremely important to us at Towcester Veterinary Centre. We want to make it very clear how we store and use your information, how we protect it and what rights you have over the data we store.

We will continuously update this document so ensure you refer back to it regularly.

This Privacy Policy applies to our websites, online platforms and computer programmes in our clinics. “Personal data” or “PII” (personably identifiable information) relates to all data that is collected and stored about you which, either on its own or with other data we store, can be used to identify you. All data provided by you will be stored and used in compliance with General Data Protection Regulations.

Contents

• Who we are
• Lawful basis for data processing
• Your personal data
• Data storage and usage
• Your rights
• Third party involvement
• Media & marketing
• Data retention

Section One

“Towcester Veterinary Centre” is the company name as a collective. Our company has different branches and departments that all operate under the same General Data Protection Regulations. These are:

• Towcester Vets
• Weedon Vets
• Paulerspury Vets
• Towcester Farm Vets
• Towcester Equine Vets
• Onley Equine Vets

In this document we will refer to Towcester Veterinary Centre and the above branches as ‘TVC’.

Section Two

Lawful basis for processing your data:

TVC is permitted to process your data as we have a legitimate interest. Your data enables us to complete the following:

• provide veterinary services;
• enhance and personalise our services to benefit you;
• provide communication to you that may be of interest via email;
• keep in contact with you about your account (including your animals, appointments, payments, invoicing etc.)

We will NOT sell or rent your information to third parties for any other reason other than those identified in the document below.

We will not share your information with any external third parties for marketing purposes; you will only receive information from TVC that we believe you will find useful.

Section Three

Your personal data

How you consent to us collecting your PII through legitimate interest:

By registering your animal with TVC you are confirming with us that you have a legitimate interest in our services. To have your animal registered we will need to collect the following information about you to complete our side of the business contract (information about this contract can be found in the Terms and Conditions on our website). Without these details TVC will not be able to register your animal and care for their wellbeing.

These details are; Full name, home address, phone number, email address & animal details. Our farm and equine clients will also need to provide their farm/ stable address for ambulatory visits. If you want somebody else to have access to all information on the account you can provide a secondary contact (termed ‘person’ on our Practice Management System (PMS)). This is particularly useful for a family pet, shared horse or emergency contact.

How we collect your data:

Your data can be collected in a number of different ways. We often have clients register their animals in clinic with one of our receptionists. When this happens, we will take all of the details above to create an account. If the client has emailed a request to TVC then a receptionist will register the client the next working day. If you have completed our online form (via our SSL encrypted website), it will be sent to the clinic and processed by a receptionist the next working day. If a client calls TVC our receptionists will then be able to register them over the phone straight away.

If you are an employee or applying for a job with TVC your information will be stored on our secure server whilst necessary. This is to process your application, calculate wages, process pay slips, help contribute towards a pension scheme and also to inform you of any changes or amendments to new or existing contracts. These details are only accessible to the relevant members of staff and will be deleted once not legally needed by TVC.

Section Four

How we store your data:

We store all of your PII on our secure PMS, ‘Eclipse’. This can only be accessed by employees with a login. Our servers are kept onsite at both our Towcester Vets and Towcester Equine Vets branches in locked cabinets which can only be opened by authorised employees. On occasion (when experiencing technical difficulties) a member of staff from Eclipse will need to remotely access the system to help our employees, however they are acting under a confidentiality contract which restricts them from using the data.

How we use your data:

Your data is used every time you call or visit to discuss your account, book in a visit/ appointment for your animal, ring to pay an invoice, request a copy of your animal’s clinical history or to edit your PII, such as address changes. We will often ask you to confirm a certain detail of your PII to ensure we do not discuss any account with unauthorised personnel. Please note it is our client’s responsibility to keep their data up to date and not doing so means you are in breach of our Terms of Business contract (more information on this can be found on our website – under Terms and Conditions).

Section Five

The rights you have with your data:

As a client using our business to provide services for your animal, you have certain rights surrounding the data we store about you. These are as follows:

• The right to be informed
• The right to access
• The right to rectification
• The right to erasure
• The right to restrict processing
• The right to data portability
• The right to object
• The right to appropriate decision making

We will always try to inform you of what data TVC stores and how we use it. This can be explained through this privacy policy and also from our staff in clinic or over the phone. As the data is about you, you will always be able to access it. We may ask a few security questions, but this is just to protect your PII from unauthorised parties. You will always have the right to rectify the data you store with us. This can be done via a phone call, email or letter. Each client has the right to have their data removed from our system, however our practice policy is to store all information for up to 7 years according to Royal College of Veterinary Surgeons (RCVS) regulation. Following on from this, we can make your account inactive and archive it so that your information is not readily accessible. The only time when this right is overruled is if the client has not fulfilled their obligation through our Terms of Business and we have had to pass details over to our debt collecting agency. We need to keep the clients record open until the payment issues have been resolved and only then do we archive the data after 7 years. If the client’s request to restrict processing is found to be valid, TVC will respect their wishes and stop processing the data. Having your data transferred portably is simple with our sophisticated Practice Management System. We can send an account summary, clinical history, payment history and various other documents to the named person on the account following a Data Subject Access Request. You may object to having your data processed if you find that our email marketing does not fall under the scope of legitimate interest. Lastly, appropriate decision making is a process where decisions will be made involving your PII that could seriously affect you, however it is done using an automated process. You have the right to object to this if you so wish.

Section six

Passing your PII to third parties:

Your PII may be passed to external third parties for the reasons outlined below. If for ANY reason you do not want your PII sent to external companies, please note you are excluding yourself from the following services:

• • Vaccine/ booster reminders (we currently use the online services Vetshare and Vetindex to send out automated vaccine reminders to clients whose pets may be due. Vetshare sends out texts and emails to our equine clients and Vetindex sends text, emails and postcards to small animal clients)

 

• • Euthanasia cremation and collection (we currently use a company called the Grafton Equine Bereavement Services for our equine clients, and a company called Lawnhill Pet Crematorium for our small animal clients. Our equine clients must understand that requesting TVC to organise the collection of their equine means that they consent to having their name, address, yard address, pet’s name and their wishes sent via email to the GEBS. If they’re unhappy for this then they must make their own arrangements for collections/ cremations. Our small animal clients will only have their surname, pets name and their wishes passed to Lawnhill Pet Crematorium; all invoicing and payments for this service is arranged through TVC. Farm clients will be given the contact numbers for the most appropriate fallen stock company – depending on location – they will then organise collection themselves.)

 

• • Insurance companies (we offer the service of processing our client’s insurance claims once we have received an insurance form from either the client or the insurance company. For this we will need to pass on your animal’s information along with a completed insurance form and the relevant invoices containing your PII and account number. If you are not happy with us handling this then please make our reception team aware.)

 

• • Lab samples (some tests performed on blood and other bodily samples can be carried out using our in house laboratory. However, some tests need to be sent to an external lab for testing. On these occasions we will send your surname and your animal’s details to the laboratory along with any relevant clinical history. We will NOT provide your contact details to the lab and all results are sent via email on secure server to our nursing team. Our farm team will sometimes include the Farm address, holding number and occasionally an email address. This will only be given if the client has given signed consent for their data to be used by the external laboratory. Often the laboratories will use the data for disease surveillance or as part of a scheme, such as the current BVD Free campaign.)

Section seven

Email marketing:

 We send the following marketing communications to our clients:

• News from Towcester Veterinary Centre
• Information on animal welfare, like top tips for exercise and health checks you can do yourself
• Promotions and the latest related product offers

The personal data that we process for these communications is first name and email address.

Our clients find these communications useful in administering care to their pets and livestock and to keep up to date with what is going on at the practice.

We would like you to enjoy these communications but if you prefer to stop receiving them it’s important to note that you can opt-out at any time by clicking the ‘Unsubscribe’ link in any marketing communications email.

The emails are designed, built and despatched by a third party, Connected Vet, who are a reputable digital marketing agency. We remain the Data Controller in this processing. We pass your data to them by secure encrypted file sharing technology and the data is processed securely by them. In turn, Connected Vet use an email service provider, Mailgun, to despatch the emails to you.

Both Connected Vet and Mail Gun follow industry accepted standards to protect the personal information submitted to them, both during transmission and once it is received, ensuring the appropriate electronic, physical and managerial procedures are in place with a view to safeguarding and preserving all the data handled.

Section eight

Data retention:

We will only store your data for as long as is necessary. As explained earlier in this policy, we operate in accordance with the RCVS regulations of storing data for up to 7 years for your animals. If necessary, we can remove certain PII to archive your account if you know that you will not use our services again (for example, you’ve moved out of the area, ceased trading or sold the only animal you had registered with TVC). Once this 7-year period is up we will remove your PII and archive the account, keeping your animal’s records just in case you need any clinical history for future veterinary treatment or insurance queries.