In some cases, a clinic may want to remove a patient's data from Ocean. This can happen when a patient has concerns about the privacy and safety of their patient health information. It's important to note that Ocean encrypts all patient data using a clinic-specific private encryption key. This means that no agent outside of the clinic can ever decrypt or read private patient information (including Ocean staff).
Additionally, Ocean is not designed to be a long term repository of that encrypted patient health information. As a result, the platform regularly purges any encrypted patient data once it has been synced to the primary patient record. You can learn more about this approach, including data retention periods here.
Despite this, there may be times when a clinic is asked by a patient to ensure that no encrypted patient data is (even temporarily) in Ocean. Furthermore, patients may ask to "opt out" (or ensure that they do not receive communication via Ocean in the future.
In this case, the clinic should follow the following steps:
- Purge the patient from the Ocean Portal (instructions below).
- Ensure that there is no email address in the email field in the EMR Patient Record.
- If your clinic uses text reminders, advise the patient to follow the standard opt-out process in the text message (described here)
How to Purge a Patient from the Ocean Portal
- Log in to the Ocean Portal and locate the patient within the "Patients" page. Select the patient by clicking their name.
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- Press the "Remove Patient" button from the list of actions on the right hand side.
- You will be reminded that any data that has not yet been downloaded to the EMR will be lost, and be prompted to confirm the removal of the patient.
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- Click "Yes - Remove Patient" to purge the patient from Ocean.