Portman Dental Care

March 27, 2023

Portman Dental Care

Portman Dental Care is a growing group of dental practices located throughout the UK and Europe. Established in 2009, the organisation now operates over 200 practices across the United Kingdom, Ireland, and the wider European market, caring for more than 700,000 patients. Offering a range of specialist, private and NHS dental services, Portman Dental Care is committed to clinical excellence, innovation, and continuous development across its expanding network.

Portman Dental Care engaged The DPO Centre to strengthen its compliance and enhance its internal knowledge and handling of Data Subject Access Requests (DSARs) across its expanding network of practices.

Key Challenges

Handling complex DSARs
Redacting large volumes of data
Maintaining consistency across practices

Solutions

The DPO Centre began by conducting a compliance audit to assess Portman Dental Care’s data protection needs, with a particular focus on Data Subject Access Request (DSAR) handling. Following the review, the designated DPO worked with Portman Dental Care to define redaction parameters and clarify internal responsibilities around patient rights requests.

The DPO Centre’s DSAR specialists then provided hands-on support with high-volume and complex requests. This included narrowing the scope where appropriate, applying consistent redactions (particularly of special category data), and conducting final quality assurance checks before issuing the response to the data subject.

Ongoing consultancy has helped embed good practice across the organisation, with clear procedures enabling staff to manage DSARs confidently and compliantly across the group’s growing network.

Outcome

Glen Curry, Head of Regulatory at Portman Dental Care, said:

‘The DPO Centre’s service has been invaluable. By outsourcing our DSAR support, we have removed the need for our staff members to work extra hours. Gaining access to the most up-to-date data protection knowledge from The DPO Centre, who remain available to support and advise us. This is a benefit that we would not receive by simply installing redaction software. Working with The DPO Centre to implement guidance and agree on redaction parameters when dealing with DSARs has been insightful and enabled us to build on our existing knowledge, which, in turn, allows us to comply with industry best practice across the whole business.’