Patient contact details handed to personal injury claim firm (From Bury Times)

Patient contact details handed to personal injury claim firm

8:40am Thursday 2nd June 2011 in News

A PERSONAL injury clerk has been ordered to pay more than £2,000 after he admitted getting confidential patient details from his girlfriend.

Martin Campbell persuaded his former partner Dawn Makin to hand over details of 29 patients from the walk-in centres where she worked as a nurse, Bury Magistrates heard.

Campbell then used the patients’ contact details to generate extra work for the personal injury claims company where he worked, Direct Assist in Bury.

Ms Makin tried to kill herself at her home in Lea Mount Drive, Bury, in February, by slashing her wrists and drinking a toxic fluid.

The 33-year-old was found unconscious next to the body of her four-year-old daughter, Chloe Burke, who had been stabbed to death.

Police have launched a murder investigation but are not looking for anyone else in connection with the incident.

Ms Makin, who was a nurse at Moorgate walk-in centre in Bury, was also being investigated by the Information Commissioner’s Office for allegedly breaching confidentiality by leaking patients’ details.

The ICO is no longer pursuing action against Ms Makin, who is still in Fairfield Hospital and is not well enough to speak to police.

Campbell, aged 34, of Willow Street, Bury, was on Wednesday fined £1,050 and ordered to pay £1,160 costs, plus a £15 victim surcharge.

He pleaded guilty to illegally obtaining NHS patients’ information over a four month period.

He was caught when patients who had been treated at Moorgate and Prestwich walk-in centres complained to Bury Primary Care Trust because they had been contacted by a man who asked them about their injuries and encouraged them to make a claim.

An investigation by the trust revealed that Ms Makin had accessed the patients’ files without good reason, the court heard.

Information Commissioner Christopher Graham said: “Martin Campbell would have known that obtaining the information was unlawful and yet he put his greed ahead of peoples’ privacy rights.

“Where greed and breach of trust meet, then the results, as in this case, can be tragic.”