Texting, emailing and messaging patients and service users guidance for patients and service users

You will sometimes receive messages about your health and care services or on behalf of someone you care for. These might be texts, emails or other messages, such as messages in the NHS App and other messaging apps. This guidance explains how health and care organisations send these messages to you legally and responsibly.

Health and care organisations might send you messages about your care. Examples include:

• messages about treatment you have received
• messages about an appointment you need to attend
• messages about a prescription to collect
• messages about vaccinations
• messages about screening for illnesses

You should not open or respond to messages that seem suspicious. Examples of suspicious messages include:

• messages asking you to pay for missing an appointment with a link to a payment website
• messages asking you to book appointments with a link to a fake website (please see Stop! Think Fraud guidance for information on how to identify a fake website)

These may be sent by people trying to illegally obtain your data or defraud you. Other common features of scam messages include:

• wrong spellings and poor grammar
• links to illegitimate websites
• urgency and emotion

You should never click on any links or provide any personal details if a message looks suspicious, or you do not know why it has been sent. If you are not sure, contact your health and care organisation who can confirm whether the message is safe

Some health and care organisations may ask you how you prefer to be contacted, as part of registering or confirming contact details. For example, you may be asked if you are happy to be contacted by text, and email.

If you express a preference, as part of this your health and care organisation should use the method of contact you state when it is possible. There may be times when they need to use a different method of contact to make sure you get an important message, such as if your appointment is cancelled.

Objecting

You can ask to never receive messages from your health and care organisation. This includes asking never to be contacted in certain ways, for example email or text. This is called ‘objecting’. Your right to object to your personal data being used by an organisation includes being able to object to your personal data being used to send you messages.

To object to receiving messages, you need to:

• get in touch with your health and care organisation
• ask not to be contacted, either entirely or in a certain way
• give a reason why

The more information you can provide to your health and care organisation for your reason, the easier it is for them to understand your situation.

If you tell your health and care organisation not to send you messages, they will explain what could happen. After hearing your reason they may be able to respond to your concerns so that you decide your objection is no longer needed.

If your health or care organisation is not able to send you messages, this may make you have a worse experience using their services. For example, you may have to wait longer to receive messages about your care by post.

Your health and care organisation would need to have a strong reason to message you by text, email or another method after you have objected to being contacted in that way and given a specific reason why.

See the example below for a situation where this might apply.

A decision to override an objection is made carefully, based on your situation and reasons for objecting.

Messages about your care are confidential and can generally only be sent to you. They can only be sent to another person if:

• you have given your consent for another person to receive messages about your care, acting as a proxy
• you do not have capacity to make decisions about your health and care, and it has been agreed that another person can act as a proxy. This person would also need approval to receive messages on your behalf

You can ask to receive messages on behalf of someone else if they consent (agree) to it. If they do not have the ability to make decisions about their health and care, you can ask to receive messages for them if any of the below apply:

• you have parental responsibility (if the person is under 18 years old)
• you have a lasting power of attorney for health and welfare for them, which has been activated
• you are a court-appointed deputy for them
• you can provide evidence that you are acting in the person’s best interests

Based on your situation, a health or care organisation will decide whether they can give you access. Sometimes they won’t be able to. To find out more, you should ask the health and care organisation looking after the person you want to receive messages for.

To protect your privacy, your health and care organisation will:

• only include confidential health information in messages where it is necessary to do so
• use messaging apps and services which have been approved by the organisation’s data security teams
• ensure staff follow security policies, for example encrypting emails which is a way of electronically protecting them