Terms, Policies & Procedures

Overview

Hope Veterinary Surgery (Deborah Wragg Ltd) is committed to protecting your personal data.

This privacy notice tells you how Hope Veterinary Surgery will collect and process your personal data if you register as a client, purchase our services and products, and use our website.

About Us

Hope Veterinary Surgery is an independent veterinary surgery in Stoke-on-Trent. We protect the health and well-being of your pets, offering a range of services that include: diagnosing and treating sick and injured animals, advising owners on the right pet care, and providing a range of care related products for purchase.

Who to contact regarding your personal data

We take your privacy seriously. Our Data Protection Manager looks after data protection and would be happy to answer any of your questions about this privacy notice and how Hope Veterinary uses your data. They can be contacted directly at accounts@hopevets.net or on 01782 657788.

The personal data we collect and process

We may collect your personal data in a number of ways, face to face, telephone or email. We would not ask for personal data over social media but appreciate they may appear if you contact us using social media. We may also get your personal data from another veterinary practice, for example if you are swapping to us, we would need the patient’s history. We would need your permission for this. There are four main ways we process the personal data you provide. We endeavor to keep this information accurate and up to date, and not keep it longer than is necessary.

This personal data will be used for the following services and purposes:

1. To administer your account as a surgery client

In order to provide our service effectively and ensure the best possible care for your pet, we need to collect and process the following personal data when we register you as a client. We store your details though a data processor MWI Animal Health on their Merlin Practice Management System to allow us to run appointments and record keeping for the care of your pet.

Personal data type	How the data is collected
First name, Last name	As part of registering to be a client
Address	As part of registering to be a client
Phone number (normally a mobile)	As part of registering to be a client
Email address	As part of registering to be a client

• To administer your account, and provide the products and services you have requested from us. For example, invoicing, calling to change an appointment and to keep a record for legal and accounting purposes.
• To inform you by email of service information about the practice. For example, notification of seasonal opening times or changes to out of hours availability.
• If you have pet insurance and you wish to make a claim, we will pass on your pet’s clinical history with your name and address to your insurance company to allow them to process your claim.
• If we take a biological sample from your pet that needs to be sent to an external laboratory (eg. blood or cytology), we may need to fill in a form and add your name and address for identification purposes. Many laboratories now only require your surname.

2. To send you marketing communications as a surgery client

We send all our clients the following marketing communications:

• Reminders for pet vaccinations and administering preventative healthcare treatments.
• News information on animal welfare, like top tips for exercise and health checks you can do yourself.
• Promotions and the latest related product offer.

Clients find these communications useful in administering care to their pets and to keep up to date with what is going on at the surgery. They are only sent to existing clients who can opt-out at any time by contacting the surgery.

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

We would like our clients to enjoy these communications, so it is important to note that you can opt-out at any time by:

• Clicking the ‘Unsubscribe’ link in any marketing communications email.
• Calling our team at the surgery on 01782 657788.
• Dropping into the surgery and speaking to a member of our team.

3. To share with veterinary related 3rd parties WITH your consent

There will be occasions where we will need to ask for your consent to share your personal data with a 3rd party. We only do this when it is necessary for the patient’s care:

•  If you would like your pet to be referred to a specialist veterinary surgeon, we will provide them with your pet’s clinical history with your name and address to enable them to confirm your referral appointment.
• Should you wish to move to an alternative veterinary surgery, we will provide your pet’s clinical history with your name and address to your new vets before closing your account.
• Should you wish to chip your pet, we register your name, address and contact number with the chip provider. Note that chipping dogs and cats is a legal requirement and we share your personal data in this case under a legal obligation to do so.
• If you pet is insured, we will often provide your name and address to the relevant insurance companies to confirm the correct patient and client.
• Occasionally we will need to supply your name and address in order to fulfil an online pharmacy order or delivery
• We use Green Pastures for our pet cremation service. We will give out your name, address and phone numbers. This is so they can perform their service and take payments.
• Occasionally we will give Rescue Centres your details, often only name and number is given.
• Debt collection services will be given your name, address, number and email data

Hope Veterinary Surgery will not pass on your personal data to any third parties without your consent unless the law requires us to do so. We do not provide any personal data to the suppliers of the medicines we administer or the pet care products we sell.

4. When you use our Hope Veterinary Surgery website

When someone visits www.hopevets.co.uk we use a third-party service, Google Analytics, to collect standard internet log information and details of visitor behaviour patterns. We do this to find out things like the number of visitors to the various parts of the website. This information is processed in a way which does not identify anyone. We will be using our website to allow clients to register and to order medications, none of your detail will be saved in this manner. Our website will be connected to MWI Animal Health, Merlin via a portal link (our Practice Management System).

We share your personal data with MWI Animal Health, for the purposes of them providing the services provided through the Hope Veterinary Surgery appointment booking portal, which will include the following categories of personal data: Client name, address, phone number, email address.

We use cookies, which are small text files that are placed on your computer when you visit. We do this to make our website work more efficiently and to monitor usage.

Hope Veterinary Surgery uses a third-party service to help maintain the security and performance of our website. To deliver this service it processes the IP addresses (a number assigned to each of your devices connected to the internet by your broadband provider) of visitors to the website.

Hope Veterinary Surgery uses a third-party service to help maintain the security and performance of our website. To deliver this service it processes the IP addresses (a number assigned to each of your devices connected to the internet by your broadband provider) of visitors to the Hope Veterinary Surgery website.

How we protect your data

Your data is secured on our practice management system (Merlin), which only allows authorised access. This is regularly updated and monitored. We have a separate IT department (Hixon Group) to ensure our systems are up to date with the relevant firewall and antivirus software. They will inform us of any breach in security, and where necessary we will contact those involved. Our employees have undertaken GDPR training and we have a policy in place for the storage and disclosure of your information.

CCTV/Telephone Recordings

We have CCTV in operation in reception, on the carpark and in the prep room. We do not use this to collect any data (image data). It is for the safety of the public and our staff and in the prevention of crime. The access to the footage is only to authorised staff members and is only kept for legal requirements. We will not disclose the footage to anyone outside the authorised personnel unless it is for law enforcement. All our phone calls are now recorded. This is for training and auditing purposes. Only authorised staff have success to these and no payment data is stored.

Disclosure of personal data to our service providers

We may pass on your personal data to service providers contracted to Hope Veterinary Surgery in the course of dealing with you. They act as a data processor on our behalf and are obliged under contract to keep your details secure, and only use them to fulfil the services they provide on our behalf. When they no longer need your data to fulfil this service, they dispose of it in line with Hope Veterinary Surgery procedures.

How long do we process your data for?

Hope Veterinary Surgery is required to retain information in accordance with the law, such as information needed for income tax and audit purposes.

In order to comply with our professional liability insurance, we keep and securely store past clients’ records for [seven years]. This includes full name, address, email address and telephone number, but excludes bank account details.

If there has been no activity for several years and no response to our enquiries, we will close the client’s account and archive the data.

Your rights as a data subject

• Right of access – you have the right to request a copy of the information that we hold about you.

You can do that by coming to the surgery or by calling 01782 657788. If we do hold information about you, we will:

• give you a description of it;
• tell you why we are holding it
• tell you who it could be disclosed to; and
• let you have a copy of the information in an intelligible form.

*Please note that you will need to provide proof of identity – a current passport or driving licence.

• Right of rectification – you have a right to correct data that we hold about you that is inaccurate or incomplete.
• Right to be forgotten – in certain circumstances you can ask for the data we hold about you to be erased from our records.
• Right to restriction of processing – where certain conditions apply to have a right to restrict the processing.
• Right of portability – you have the right to have the data we hold about you transferred to another organisation.
• Right to object – you have the right to object to certain types of processing such as direct marketing.
• Right to object to automated processing, including profiling – you also have the right to be subject to the legal effects of automated processing or profiling.
• Right to judicial review: in the event that Hope Veterinary Surgery refuses your request under rights of access, we will provide you with a reason as to why. You have the right to complain as outlined below.

What is a cookie?

Cookies are small text files placed on your computer by the websites you visit. They are widely used in order to make websites work, or work more efficiently, as well as to provide information to the owners of the website.

Cookies are split into four categories:

• Strictly necessary – these are necessary to provide our service and allow the website to function and do not store any personal data
• Functional – these will allow more functional use of the website and personalisation
• Performance – these allow us to monitor usage and help us to improve our website
• Targeting cookies – may be used to personalise the website to your usage, and do not directly store personal data

Our website is owned by Hope Veterinary Surgery and developed by Hixon Group. Any websites linked to our website may contain their own cookies (please refer to their individual policies).

How do I change my cookie settings?

Most web browsers allow some control of most cookies through the browser settings. To find out more about cookies, including how to see what cookies have been set and how to manage and delete them, visit www.aboutcookies.org or www.allaboutcookies.org.

Most website browsers have an opt out of cookies section. See below:

• Chrome: https://support.google.com/chrome/answer/95647
• Firefox: https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/products/firefox/privacy-and-security
• Opera: https://help.opera.com/en/latest/security-and-privacy/
• Safari: https://support.apple.com/en-gb/guide/safari/welcome/mac
• Edge: https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/edge/microsoft-edge-browsing-data-and-privacy

Please note selecting to opt out of cookies you may change the function of a webpage, meaning not all aspects of the webpage may work as expected.

Contact us for more information

If you have any questions about how our website uses cookies, please contact us on info@hopevets.net or 01782 657788 and one of our team will get back to you.

Complaints

We take the processing of your personal data very seriously and are here to help with any concerns you may have. Please do contact the Data Protection Manager at accounts@hopevets.net or phone 01782 657788.

If you are still not happy with how your personal data is being processed by Hope Veterinary Surgery or how your complaint has been handled, you also have the right to lodge a complaint directly with the Information Commissioners Office at https://ico.org.uk/concerns/ or by calling 0303 123 1113.