Senators are cracking down on telehealth companies sharing sensitive health data
In the wake of the FTC’s recent $1.5 million settlement with GoodRx for disclosing health data with Facebook, lawmakers have introduced legislation and have sent letters to other telehealth providers.
In the wake of the Federal Trade Commission’s recent $1.5 million settlement with telehealth services provider GoodRx for allegedly disclosing patients’ health data with Facebook, Google, and other digital companies, a bipartisan group of United States senators is seeking greater transparency in the industry.
On March 3, Sens. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.), Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) and Mazie Hirono (D-HI) introduced legislation to expand protections for Americans’ personal health data privacy.
Also, Sen. Klobuchar, along with Susan Collins (R-Maine), Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.), and Cynthia Lummis (R-Wyo.) sent a letter dated Feb. 2 to leaders of telehealth companies Monument, Workit Health, and Cerebral requesting specific information regarding how they share consumer health data.
Those three companies, along with nearly 50 other direct-to-consumer telehealth services providers, were cited in a recent investigation by STAT and The Markup for sharing patient data with major online advertising platforms.
“Telehealth — an industry valued at over $30 billion — has become a popular and effective way for many Americans to receive care,” the senators wrote. “One-fifth of the U.S. population resides in rural or medically underserved communities where access to virtual care is vital. This access should not come at the cost of exposing personal and identifiable information to the world’s largest advertising ecosystems.”
Each letter specifically requested the following:
- A complete list of questions users of the platform may be asked.
- A list of all third-party platforms to which the companies send (or have sent) tracked user information over the past three years.
- Confirmation that each company will “commit to providing clear, easy-to-understand plain language information to patients about which personal information you do and do not keep confidential.”
Becker’s Healthcare obtained written statements from both Cerebral and Workit Health.
In an email, a Cerebral representative said, “We take patient privacy very seriously and share the Senators’ thoughts about the importance of privacy of patient information. We are working diligently to answer their important questions and are in the process of responding. We remain committed to working with other responsible parties to establish clear guidelines concerning the evolving technologies that improve the delivery of mental health care.”
Related: Employers call on Congress to focus on 4 key health policy priorities
A Workit Health representative offered a similar response: “We appreciate the Senate’s attention to the way tracking technologies are used in digital health, as privacy is a core part of our ethos, and one of the reasons our co-founders created a discreet, online program. This letter creates an opportunity to broach a conversation more broadly about standard industry practices in healthcare at large, and we are responding to the letter with the attentive diligence it demands.”