A former Alberta Health Services billing clerk was fined $8,000 and given one-year probation after admitting to illegally accessing health information.
Amarish Tripathi recently pleaded guilty in Red Deer provincial court to knowingly accessing health information in contravention of the Health Information Act.
Tripathi admitted to improperly accessing the records of 81 individuals on 471 occasions. The unauthorized accesses occurred at the Michener Centre in Red Deer, where he had been employed.
The conditions of his probation include attending treatment and counselling as directed and to not be employed in a position that gives him access to health information for one year.
The office of the information and privacy commissioner opened an investigation into Tripathi’s behaviour after AHS reported the breaches in May 2018.
The office referred its findings to the specialized prosecutions branch of Alberta Justice.
Charges were laid in June 2019.
It is an offence to knowingly gain or attempt to gain access to health information. This was the fourth conviction under the act in 2019.
Last August, another former Red Deer AHS billing clerk was fined $5,000 for illegally accessing health information.
Rosario Aldave pleaded guilty to the offence in Red Deer provincial court on Aug. 21.
Aldave was found to have accessed the health records of 52 Albertans without authorization.
Since 2001, there have been 13 convictions for unauthorized access to health information under the act.
This was the second case in which one of the conditions was for the convicted not to access health information for one year.