Deleting your data

Your dental practice holds your records and decides what we hold on their behalf, so ask your practice — they can delete your details or stop your messages straight away.

What that removes: your date of birth, whether you have an NHS number (we do not hold the number itself), any medical flags, your recall dates, your appointment and treatment history, and anything you have typed to the practice through us. What it keeps, and why: your name, the email address or number we messaged, and the record of what was sent to you and when. That last part is the practice's evidence of the messages it sent — and yours, if you ever want to ask about one — so it is kept to the schedule in our privacy notice rather than deleted with the rest.

If your practice simply archives your record instead, the same erasure happens automatically 90 days later.

To stop messages without deleting anything, use the unsubscribe link at the bottom of any email we send, or reply STOP to a WhatsApp message. That takes effect immediately across email, text and WhatsApp.

If you would rather come to us, write to privacy@patientmail.co.uk with your name and the practice you attend. We will pass the request to them within ten working days and support it; your practice answers you within one month.

Email privacy@patientmail.co.uk from an address on your account. We will return your data, delete it, or both, as you instruct, within 90 days of the end of your agreement, give you a deletion certificate, and disconnect us from your practice management system and any connected WhatsApp account. The 90 days is the period our data processing agreement sets so that a practice can take a copy first; a practice that asks for deletion straight away gets it straight away.

One exception: records of patients who asked not to be contacted are kept, so that nobody starts messaging them again by mistake. These hold only the minimum needed to recognise an opt-out.

You can disconnect us at any time from your Meta Business settings, under Business Integrations. Doing so stops WhatsApp messages immediately; use the email above to delete the underlying data as well.