Court convicts Mehiläinen worker for unjustified patient-record access

A service adviser at Mehiläinen, a healthcare provider, has been convicted of unlawfully accessing patient records, Yle reports. The woman worked in Turku and was ordered to pay 70 day-fines, totalling 1,680 euros.

The Southwest Finland District Court also ordered her to pay several injured parties nearly 10,000 euros in compensation for distress.

The court found that she had opened the records of 22 people without a connection to their care or another work-related reason. The incidents took place between 2022 and 2024 and were treated as one continuing offence.

Her job involved making appointments by phone. The court said she had a reason to handle patient information only when a patient called to request an appointment. The woman admitted opening the records but denied committing a crime, citing inadequate instructions from her employer and the demands of her job. She said she had accessed some records to find contact details.

The court said that although data protection law can be complex, the principle governing access to patient records was clear and widely known. Colleagues who testified said the employer provided regular data protection training, and the woman was not known to have requested additional training.

The court noted that the records she accessed belonged to colleagues and other employees, and found that she had repeatedly abused her access to patient information. The verdict is not final.