TenetHealthcare Lawsuit Investigation: Did Your Hospital Share Your Medical Info?
Last Updated on April 2, 2024
At A Glance
- This Alert Affects:
- Facebook users who used any of the hospital websites listed below between 2021 and June 1, 2023 to obtain healthcare services.
- What’s Going On?
- Attorneys working with ClassAction.org believe Tenet Healthcare Corporation may have illegally shared certain patients’ private information with Facebook and Google via the use of tracking tools on the hospital websites it operates. They’re now looking into whether a class action lawsuit can be filed against Tenet over potential privacy violations.
- How Could a Lawsuit Help?
- A successful class action lawsuit could help compensate patients for any violations of their privacy rights. It could also prevent Tenet from engaging in any practices that allow for the illegal sharing of patient information with third parties in the future.
- What You Can Do:
- If you’re a patient of one of the hospitals listed below, you’ve used its website between 2021 and June 1, 2023 to receive healthcare services, and you also have a Facebook account, help the investigation by filling out the form on this page.
Attorneys working with ClassAction.org are investigating whether a class action lawsuit can be filed against Tenet Healthcare Corporation, one of the largest for-profit healthcare systems in the country, over concerns that it may have shared certain patients’ private information without permission.
They believe patients who used the following California hospitals’ websites, which are or were operated by Tenet, may be affected:
- Fountain Valley Regional Hospital
- Lakewood Regional Medical Center
- Los Alamitos Medical Center
- Doctors Hospital of Manteca
- Emanuel Medical Center
- San Ramon Regional Medical Center
- JFK Memorial Hospital
- Hi-Desert Medical Center
Specifically, the attorneys have reason to believe Tenet may have used tracking tools that secretly collected data about patients as they interacted with its websites and then transmitted this information to Facebook and Google.
These tools could have been used to track any information input by users as they navigated the sites, revealing sensitive data about their medical symptoms, conditions and treatments.
How Could Tenet Be Violating My Privacy?
Many website operators use tracking tools on their websites to gather data about their users.
One such tool, called the Meta pixel, can be embedded on any webpage and programmed to capture nearly every action a visitor takes on the page, such as the buttons they click, the searches they perform and the content they view. This data can then be used by both the website operator and Meta to better target advertisements to their users.
Google’s tracking tool, which transmits data to Google Analytics, functions similarly.
Attorneys are specifically looking into whether the websites mentioned above used the Meta pixel and Google Analytics in a manner that exposed patients’ personal and medical information. It’s possible that this data was shared with Meta along with each person’s Facebook ID, which is a unique identifier that could potentially be used to match the person’s information with their individual Facebook profile.
These suspected data-sharing practices may violate certain wiretapping laws, which prohibit the interception and disclosure of an individual’s electronic communications without their consent.
How Could a Lawsuit Help?
A class action lawsuit, if filed and successful, could help compensate those affected by Tenet’s suspected data-sharing practices. It also has the potential to ensure that Tenet handles patients’ data appropriately moving forward.
If you’re a Facebook user who used any of the websites mentioned above between 2021 and June 1, 2023 for healthcare purposes, fill out the form on this page. An attorney or legal representative may then reach out to you directly to help answer your questions and explain how you can help the investigation.
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