Major California Medical Center Secretly Shares Patient Data with Facebook, Class Action Says

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A proposed class action lawsuit claims the University of California San Francisco (UCSF) Medical Center secretly shares private patient data with Meta Platforms (Facebook) without consent.

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The 35-page lawsuit alleges the Regents of the University of California and UCSF Medical Center have intentionally disclosed the highly sensitive data of visitors to UCSFHealth.com and its patient portal MyChart without consent and despite their “consistent” promises of maintaining confidentiality.

The suit explains that UCSF’s website and patient portal—which allow patients to book appointments, chat directly with providers, review test results or prescriptions, pay bills and more—use an embedded tracking and advertising tool called a Meta pixel that allows Facebook to intercept and record visitor data and interactions on the UCSF webpages, the case relays.

The complaint charges that the defendants’ use of the tracking pixel, which can record and transmit to Facebook every move a user makes on UCSFHealth.com and its patient portal, is an “extreme invasion” of privacy in violation of California law.

Per the filing, if a user visits UCSF’s website or its password-protected patient portal MyChart in order to schedule an appointment or peruse treatment options, for example, the tracking pixel can collect and pass large amounts of private information to Facebook, including the patient’s date of birth, contact information, appointment details, medical conditions and any messages sent to providers.

The university system governed by UC Regents includes nationally ranked medical centers that offered a full scope of health services to roughly 2.5 million patients as of 2021, the lawsuit says. Given the defendants’ standing in the healthcare industry and the highly sensitive nature of medical information in the first place, patients have a reasonable expectation that their data will remain confidential, the suit argues.

Per the case, UC Regents had been warned previously by the company behind MyChart to use “heightened caution” when using technology like tracking pixels. In spite of this, the defendant purportedly proceeded to utilize the Meta pixel on the UCSF website and its patient portal, the complaint claims.

The plaintiff, a California resident and UCSF Medical Center patient, has been using the MyChart portal since roughly February 2022, the filing says. Without her knowledge or consent, UC Regents unlawfully transmitted to Facebook the woman’s private information, which the social media giant used to link to her Facebook profile, the suit relays.

“Indeed, after entering [her] information on the UCSF website and its MyChart patient portal,” the case reads, “Plaintiff received targeted advertisements for medications and treatments relating to the medical conditions for which she was treated for at UCSF on her Facebook page, in her email, and in her text messages.”

The lawsuit looks to represent anyone in the United States who used UCSFHealth.com or its patient portal MyChart and whose personal information and/or communications were disclosed to third parties, including Facebook.

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