Patient opting out of telephone correspondence

Personal Demographics Service (PDS)
,
1

How do we know if a patient has opted out of SMS/ calls communications from PDS API?

2

PDS does not hold information about opting out of SMS/Telephone communications at a national level.

However, there are some contact preferences that can be used, with some caveats. See the schema on Personal Demographics Service - FHIR API - NHS England Digital and some narrative on Get and update contact details in PDS - NHS England Digital about the telecoms values themselves

Texting, emailing and messaging patients and service users guidance for IG professionals - NHS England Digital

Texting, emailing and messaging patients and service users guidance for IG professionals - NHS England Digital

3

in the PDS API there is only a PreferredContactMethod field with these possible values:

  • 1 - Letter
  • 2 - Visit
  • 3 - Telephone
  • 4 - E-mail
  • 5 - Minicom (Textphone)
  • 6 - Telephone contact via proxy
  • 7 - Sign language
  • 8 - No Telephone contact

What does the option 8 imply here?