Privacy Policy - Veterinary Referral Centre

Purpose

Trust is a vital part of our relationship with our clients, you trust Medivet to provide your pet with the best possible care and this Privacy Policy explains why you can also trust us to protect your information.

Information Medivet Collects

Medivet offers a wide range of services to ensure that your pet has access to the most sophisticated healthcare treatments available and we want you to understand the types of information that we collect as you use these services.

When you join one of our practices, we collect your contact information and use it to keep in touch with you. If you’re a licensed breeder then we will collect and store your Breeder License number.
Our website is packed full of information and tips about caring for your pets and we’re happy that it’s used by many pet owners who aren’t yet Medivet customers.

We do collect information about the way you use our website and some information about how visitors are connecting to the site, this will include the operating systems and browser that is used to view the site and the IP address you’re connecting from and that will tell us a little about where in the world you are.

Sometimes we will customise the website’s behaviour based on things you’ve done on the website in the past, this means that you may be shown information we think is particularly relevant or interesting to you.

Our website works best when we can use cookies to help us understand the way that you use it, there’s a lot more information about our use of cookies on our website here.

Why Medivet collects data

We’re all about looking after your pet and we use your information to help us do just that. Your information helps us tell you about the services that are relevant to you and to provide you with important health information about your pet. Knowing a little about you also helps us improve the services that we offer now and in the future. As part of this improvement work we monitor the quality and effectiveness of all our services, and we use what we discover to improve them.

If you’ve given us permission, we’ll also use the information we hold about you to market products and services that we think might be of interest to you.

We sometimes run events, fairs, or even host school visits in our practices. This may entail the production of photographic, video or audio material. If this media contains images of you, we will only make use of it if we have obtained and recorded your consent. Should any media contain images of children, we will only make use of it with the consent of the child’s parent or guardian.

We may also use CCTV and incoming call recording in our practices for training and monitoring purposes. If we do so there will always be a notice board or a voice message prior to us answering your call to let you know what we’re doing. If you receive such a voice message and you do not wish your call to be recorded, please inform our member of staff when they answer your call and they will call you back – outgoing calls are not recorded. Records of phone calls which have been recorded are encrypted and password protected. They are deleted within 60 calendar days.

Your privacy controls

It’s really important to us that you are comfortable with the way that we are using your data and you can tell us any time if you’d like to change the way that things are working. To make that easy for you we’ve built a web-based preference centre that you can use to change your preferences for the way that we communicate with you. You’ll find a link to our preference centre on our website, or you can request that your practice sends it to you in an email or SMS message. You can also access it directly here.

If you wish to discuss our data protection practices, please contact us . Should you still not be satisfied after doing so, you are entitled to discuss the matter with a supervisory authority.

Sharing your data

Medivet may disclose your personal information to the following types of recipients:

  • Other veterinary practices or professionals, if your pet requires a particular treatment or if you wish to transfer your pet to another veterinary practice
  • Insurance companies, with whom your pet is insured
  • Third party suppliers, who we work with in order to deliver services and treatment for your pet, these include;
    • data partners that support us with analysis and insights to continuously improve the service that we offer
    • direct marketing companies who enable us to communicate with you
    • IT service providers who support our organisation’s IT systems, including our website and practice management systems
    • Social media platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and also Google to show you advice and services that might interest you whilst you are browsing the internet
    • Review companies that may invite you to review the service we have provided
  • Regulatory bodies, government departments or agencies and law enforcement bodies where we believe that we’re required to disclose such information due to legal requirements or to protect your interests or those of any third party
  • Any other third party where you have consented to such disclosure.

We participate in the VetCompass scheme, which is run by the Royal Veterinary College. VetCompass is dedicated to learning from current veterinary experience of our pets and using this knowledge to improve understanding for the pets of the future. All client data sent by us for this scheme is aggregated and anonymised. However, we understand if you might wish to opt out of the scheme. If this is the case, please let your practice know. For more information on the scheme, please visit our Vet Compass page.

Where we share your personal information with third parties identified above, we take steps to ensure such information is transferred and stored safely. We ensure that we only provide the information to third parties to the extent that it is required to perform their obligations or deliver services, and that they only use your personal information for the particular purpose that we have engaged them to provide.

Keeping your information secure

We know how important your privacy and the security of your personal information are to you and we’ve taken every reasonable effort to make sure that it is safe with us. We comply with all relevant legislation and we meet the standards set by the RCVS.

We use technologies including encryption, pseudonymisation and anonymisation to keep your data safe and secure. Our data retention policies are set up to ensure that we do not keep your data for longer than is absolutely necessary. Medivet stores its data on servers located in the European Union.

Talking to us about your data

You can ask to access, modify or delete your data held by Medivet and you can also ask us any question regarding the data that we store about you.

For all data enquiries you can contact us directly here.

Alternatively, you can contact your Veterinary Practice or directly via post at:

The Data Protection Officer
Medivet Support Centre
Unit 4, Mowat Industrial Estate
Sandown Road
Hertfordshire
WD24 7UY

If you’re unhappy with anything about our data protection practises, we’d like you to let us know here. If we’re not able to put your mind at rest, you do have the right to register a complaint with a supervisory authority.

Medivet The Vets and its associated partners are a brand operated by Medivet Group Ltd (“Medivet”), registered under #03481736.

This Privacy Notice was last updated on 13/09/21