Advocate Aurora Health and WakeMed Sued Over Meta Pixel Privacy Breaches
Two class action lawsuits have been filed on behalf of patients whose protected health information (PHI) was impermissibly disclosed to Meta/Facebook as a result of the use of the Meta Pixel JavaScript code snippet on the websites and web applications of Advocate Aurora Health and WakeMed Health and Hospitals. Advocate Aurora Health said the PHI of up to 3 million patients had potentially been disclosed to Meta/Facebook, and WakeMed said around 495,000 patients were affected due to the inclusion of the code on the MyChart patient portal and its appointment scheduling page. Both healthcare providers have admitted to an impermissible disclosure of PHI but said at the time of issuing notifications that they were unaware of any cases of misuse of patient information and that there are no indications that employees of Meta or Facebook viewed the transmitted data.
The lawsuit against Advocate Aurora Health, which also names Meta as a defendant, was filed in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois and names Alistair Stewart, of Illinois, as the lead plaintiff. The lawsuit seeks class action status, damages, and injunctive and other equitable relief. According to the lawsuit, “Whenever a patient uses Advocate’s websites and applications, including its LiveWell portal, Advocate and Facebook intercept, contemporaneously cause transmission of, and use personally identifiable patient information and PHI without patients’ knowledge, consent, or authorization.” The lawsuit alleges Advocate Aurora Health and Meta were aware that protected health information was being transmitted, and that this was in violation of the HIPAA Rules. “This was evidenced from, among other things, the functionality of the Pixel, including that it enabled Advocate’s LiveWell portal to show targeted advertising to its digital subscribers based on the products those digital subscribers had previously viewed on the website, including certain medical tests or procedures, for which Advocate received financial remuneration.”
Advocate Aurora Health maintains that the tracking code was only used to improve the consumer experience across its websites, and to encourage individuals to schedule necessary preventive care, and said it has stopped using the code and has implemented additional safeguards and third-party code-checking procedures to prevent similar breaches in the future.
The lawsuit against WakeMed was filed in the Wake County Superior Court in North Carolina by attorneys Gary Jackson and Tom Wilmoth and similarly seeks class action status, damages, and injunctive relief. The lawsuit makes similar claims and also alleges that the code was added to the website in the knowledge that sensitive patient data would be shared with Meta, and that WakeMed received financial benefits from sharing that information with Meta. The lawsuit alleges violations of FTC Rules and HIPAA, as sensitive healthcare data, including PHI, was shared with Meta without the knowledge or consent of the plaintiff and class members.
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The lawsuit states the plaintiff reasonably expected her online communications with WakeMed to be confidential and would not be shared with or intercepted by a third party, and that consent to share her data had not been requested or obtained. The lawsuit alleges negligence for failing to implement reasonable safeguards to prevent improper disclosures of PHI, failing to adequately train employees, and failing to follow industry-standard data security practices.
In order for healthcare data breach lawsuits to succeed, an actual injury must have been sustained. In contrast to data breach lawsuits filed against healthcare organizations that have been hacked, the plaintiffs’ PHI is not in the hands of cybercriminals and there has been no injury through fraud or identity theft. The lawsuits allege an injury has been suffered in the form of the diminution in the value of the plaintiffs’ and class members’ private information. The plaintiff in the WakeMed lawsuit alleges she has lost time and experienced annoyance, interference, and inconvenience, which has led to her suffering anxiety, emotional distress, and increased concerns about her loss of privacy.
Many healthcare providers added Meta Pixel code to their websites. A study conducted by The Markup revealed 33 of the top 100 hospitals in the United States used the code, several of which added Meta Pixel to their patient portals. In August 2022, Novant Health announced that the PHI of up to 1.36 million patients had potentially been disclosed to Meta/Facebook, and many other healthcare providers are expected to make similar announcements in the coming weeks. Lawsuits have already been filed against Medstar Health System in Maryland, UCSF Medical Center and Dignity Health Medical Foundation, and Northwestern Memorial Hospital in Chicago, due to the use of the tracking code on their websites.
