A former 111 call centre advisor has been found guilty and fined for illegally accessing the medical records of a child and his family.
Martin Swan, 56, from Pinner, London, worked as a service advisor at the NHS 111 call centre in Southall when he illegally accessed the records.
A complaint had been raised against Mr Swan, following a disagreement during a 111 call over the distance to a medical centre, prompting him to access the records of the complainant, the complainant’s child and two other relatives.
Mr Swan accessed the personal records without consent or a legal reason to do so and produced screenshots of the child’s patient notes at an internal investigation meeting in June 2016. He proceeded to contact the father with accusations of falsifying events and was dismissed for gross misconduct in November 2016. He contacted the father once again in January 2017, threatening to report him for neglect.
Following the investigation from the Information Commissioner’s Office, Mr Swan pleaded guilty to five counts of unlawfully obtaining personal data in breach of Section 55 of the Data Protection Act when he appeared at Uxbridge Magistrates’ Court on 15 February 2023. He was fined £630 with a victim surcharge and court costs totalling £1,093.