2023-08-23 09:24:06
The health worker from the Galician Health Service (Sergas) accessed her ex-partner’s electronic medical record 196 times and that of his partner’s on 124 occasions. The Provincial Court of Pontevedra has sentenced a nurse for improper access to medical records.
The penalty could have been greater. The Provincial Court of Pontevedra has sentenced a nurse from the Galician Health Service (Sergas) to three years and ten months in prison, the payment of a fine of 4,050 euros, a nine-year professional disqualification and the prohibition to approach the plaintiffs for three years and ten months.
It has been shown that the health worker committed two crimes of discovery of secrets by accessing the medical history of her former partner and the father of her daughter on 196 occasions and on 124 accessing the medical history of her ex’s sentimental partner. The events occurred between January 17, 2016 and October 17, 2019.
The penalties could have been harsher if the court had considered the incursions he made into the medical records of the daughter he has in common with his ex as a crime. She made 134 accesses to the girl’s clinical data “without healthcare justification” and without informing her father, from whom she was already separated. But, the Court reasons that these accesses were when her daughter was a minor and the defendant exercised her parental authority over her and held exclusive custody of her. The girl resided with her mother and the court says that, in these circumstances, “the mother could request and obtain a copy of the minor’s medical history.”
The sentence would also have increased if the court had not applied the mitigation of reparation for the damage, because the nurse allocated 12,000 euros in favor of the injured as compensation for moral damages on July 7, 2023, as stated in the sentence. But, on the other hand, justice has appreciated the aggravating circumstance of kinship in relation to her ex-partner.
In the trial it was demonstrated that the accesses to the clinical histories were made without the express or tacit consent of those affected, nor with a healthcare justification. The convicted woman used her IANUS card, a system that collects medical records in the Vigo health area, where he worked at the time.
The two continuous crimes of discovery of secrets related to the health of the victim committed by a public official are provided for and punished in article 198 of the Penal Code. Health data is specially protected and its improper “simple access” constitutes a crime. And two, when it affects two victims.
The nurse’s defense argued that she suffered from some anomaly or mental disorder and this statement was supported by two expert reports. The reports of the experts reflected a mixed adjustment disorder derived from the relationship she had with her ex, in which they reported a history of violence from her partner towards her, intense fear towards her physical integrity and the physical integrity of the minor, high vital anguish, breach of restraining orders, feeling of injustice and defenselessness…
Thus, the defense reiterated that the sentenced person was in a situation “of an urgent need to recurrently, obsessively and compulsively access the clinical histories of the aforementioned persons to verify, corroborate, check appointments, prescription medications, etc. “
episode of violence
Was there violence between the couple that served as mitigation? The Court dismissed this argument because it says that “there is no evidence of any episode of violence or aggressiveness of the ex-partner in relation to the accused, except for those contained in the sentence of the Criminal Court number 1 of Vigo, of December 15 of 2016 and November 12 and 18, 2016”.
But, before that date, there are already records of improper access by the nurse to the medical history of her ex-partner, when she was not yet her ex “when they still lived together, the daughter had not been born in common and the relationship between the two was good ”. In addition, she also accessed the appellant’s clinical history “when he was in prison and they had no contact with her or with her minor daughter” and, the judgment says, “from then on she could feel no fear [la condenada] neither for her physical integrity nor for the girl.”
The long period in which improper accesses are recorded does not allow admitting as a mitigation the situation of “outburst or blindness of article 21.3 of the Penal Code”. The judgment admits an appeal before the Supreme Court. loneliness valley
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