Retention and data requests
Deciding how long to keep things, and handling a patient who asks for their data.
Three retention windows, set independently. Each says "delete records of this kind once they are older than N".
| What | Covers |
|---|---|
| Conversation history | Chats received through the widget. |
| Appointments | Closed appointment records. |
| Financial transactions | Payments, refunds and other money movements. |
Unset means keep forever. That is a choice, and until you make it deliberately it is a choice nobody made. Data minimisation is not a setting that arrives switched on.
Choosing a window
Two constraints pull in opposite directions and both are real:
- Medical records have a minimum retention period in most jurisdictions, often measured in years after the last contact, and longer for minors. That floor beats any preference.
- Financial records have their own minimum, set by accounting law rather than health law.
- Conversation transcripts usually have neither, which makes them the one where a short window is genuinely available.
Conversation history is where most clinics should start. A year of chat transcripts rarely serves anyone, and it is the category with the least legal reason to be kept.
The purge runs nightly and records what it did, so a window is a policy that actually executes rather than an intention in a document.
Patient data requests
When a patient asks for a copy of their data, or asks you to delete it, log the request here and record what you did about it.
- Record the request against the patient, with the date.
- Verify who is asking. This is the step that gets skipped and the one that matters — acting on an unverified request is itself a breach.
- Do the thing: export the record, correct it, or delete it.
- Write a resolution note saying what was done and who was informed.
You can satisfy most of these yourself, immediately, without involving us. That is the point of the panel giving you find, correct, export and delete directly — a subject access request answered in a day is a much better answer than one answered in a month.
A request to erase does not always win. Where a retention obligation requires you to keep a record, you keep it, and the answer to the patient explains that rather than pretending otherwise.
Common questions
- If a patient contacts you directly, what happens?
- We do not act on their record. We tell them to contact their clinic and let the clinic know they tried.
- Does deleting a patient remove their appointments and files?
- Deleting the record removes what hangs off it. Export anything you are obliged to keep before you delete.
- Can I get the retention purge to run now?
- It runs nightly. Deleting a specific record is immediate and is the right tool for a specific request.