Court Case That Could Impact Healthcare Social Media in a Big Way

There is some interesting litigation on the dockets that could potentially have some far reaching implications for healthcare social media and the future of healthcare public websites. There was a class action lawsuit filed against Facebook and various healthcare organizations including American Cancer Society, Adventist Health System, BJC HealthCare, and the Cleveland Clinic. The suit claims that PHI was exchanged between Facebook and these healthcare providers without patient consent by way of the code embedded in the website social sharing features.

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But what does this mean? Essentially, the issue at play here pertains to those instances where a website visitor clicks a link or icon on a healthcare website for the purposes of sharing that information with others or simply liking that article. Based on some available code in some of these functions, this information is then transmitted to Facebook and Facebook can then use that information to identify the individual for marketing purposes.

Potentially Far Reaching Impact

• The first is to understand how your public website(s) use social sharing features and limit the specific code that sends information to Facebook (at least until we gain more clarity from this case law).
• Have your legal team look into updating your website’s privacy policy to create additional safeguards
• Consider instituting a required consent feature into these social sharing functions. A good model here can be found in public websites in the European Union. The EU currently has the most restrictive laws when it comes to requiring consent for storing cookies and other digital fingerprinting tactics used in web personalization. As such, organizations have created ways to incorporate these consent features into websites while being the least intrusive to user experience as possible. Check out how global brands, like McDonalds and Coca-Cola, have incorporated consent into their web experience in, say, France or the UK. (Added bonus: While you are there you can also see some interesting examples of how what we consider to be iconic branding has been altered to fit within the ethos of other countries and cultures.)