Me and the wife have a joint hospital appt and I asked for the day off. My main manager asked for the appointment letter so photocopied that and took it in.
My manager refused the day off and gave the assistant manager the letter and holiday form to give to me.
I told the wife this and she’s gone mental (well more than usual)
Can he ask for appointment letter and then should he have passed the letter to a third party? The wife works in a doctor’s and said it’s a breach of patient confidentiality

I officially* have to provide an appointment letter to prove I have medical appointment and get the time off. Fairly normal practice.

You can redact the bits you don’t want them to see if it’s a sensitive issue, they just need to see the hospital and appointment details.

*My boss now knows I’m slightly unhinged and takes my word for it when I need to see someone.

Yes, they *can* refuse you the hospital appointment. A bit of a dumb thing to do, though. Essentially, both parties have to be “reasonable”.

Rachel

There can only be a breach of patient confidentiality if you were his patient. That being said, it does sound like you work somewhere that has a fairly undeveloped attitude towards illness and the like.

As above..the patient confidentiality component is with you and your doctor.

You gave ‘another person’ your letter. They gave it to someone else… Not great, but they’ve no medical confidentiality agreement with you, have they?

DrP

In my previous employment they would let you have the time but it was always unpaid….

If you provided the information in confidence for the eyes of your manager only, I’d be a bit miffed if it got passed to the lower ranks.

If we’re talking about sensitive personal information that can be deduced from the letter (name of department, fact you’re both going), then you’d have to be a halfwit not to work out that it needed to be handled better, and not shared unless absolutely necessary.

Sadly, your manager doesn’t seem to be sensitive to a deserving request for time off, so the other bit is no surprise either.

It is an item of sensitive personal data under the data protection act.

If the assistant manager is not processing the data he has no right to see it and your boss has breached the act.

Where you go from here is up to you…

It is an item of sensitive personal data under the data protection act.

Unlikely to be covered as it’s not an electronic record and not likely to be recorded as one by the employer.

Doesn’t it count as an accessible record?

Been a while since I did the training so it’s possible I have got it wrong.

I imagine the data subject choosing to share that particular record with the company is also relevant. It has not been shared outside the organisation, or ostensibly for any other purpose than the one he shared it for.