Protecting patient confidentiality

• Reports are received by the Yellow Card Scheme in strict confidence.
• Information revealing the patient’s identity is never released without consent.
• No patient personal information is stored i.e. name or date of birth unless this is a direct report from a patient about their experience. 
• Data is held securely.

Healthcare professionals can report suspected adverse drug reactions in line with data protection legislation and the General Medical Council (GMC) guidelines on confidentiality (external link) as no patient personal information is required.  Patient consent is not required for reporting, although doctors should still talk with their patients if they wish.

Healthcare  professional Yellow Cards
A Yellow Card requests an identification number for the patient; for example a practice or hospital number. This enables the patient to be identifiable to the reporter but not to anyone else and allows the reporter to know whom the report is referring to for any potential future correspondence.

For healthcare professional reporte adverse drug reactions, any documents that contain personal identifiers should be anonymised before they are sent. The Yellow Card Registration Number which we will provide should be quoted when sending follow up information to enable us to link any information with the initial report.