Atrium Health shared patient data with Facebook, class-action lawsuit alleges

A class-action lawsuit filed in North Carolina accuses Atrium Health of allowing Facebook and Google to access patient information online to use in targeted ads.

The plaintiffs, identified only as North Carolina-resident J.S. and Michigan-citizen J.R., allege they received spam mail and Facebook ads related to their medical conditions after sharing information with Atrium.

Facebook’s Meta Pixel, a free piece of code that can be installed on websites, intercepted private information on Atrium’s website in violation of federal law, the lawsuit alleges. It was filed Wednesday in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of North Carolina.

Atrium is a Charlotte-based healthcare organization with seven emergency departments, 40 hospitals, and 1,400 other care locations across North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia and Alabama, according to its website. It sees about 34,000 patients a day, the lawsuit says. It is part of Advocate Health, the third-largest nonprofit health system in the United States.

Screenshots filed with the federal lawsuit show how Pixel collected information by following the plaintiffs’ searches for pulmonology, neurology, radiology and emergency departments, as well as COVID testing locations and alcohol-rehab centers. The plaintiffs allege they first discovered misconduct in June 2022.

J.R. — an Atrium patient of nearly 20 years — alleges that Facebook and other social media started to push medication and prescription ads into her feed after she submitted “protected health information,” including specific symptoms and treatments, to Atrium.

Pixel followed search activity on Atrium’s website before patients logged in to their portal, the lawsuit alleges.

“The full scope of [Atrium’s] interceptions and disclosures of … communications to Meta can only be determined through formal discovery,” says the new lawsuit.

The lawsuit indicates Atrium removed Pixel “following a wave of negative press and litigation against other healthcare companies for the same unlawful activities.”

A 2022 investigation by nonprofit newsroom The Markup named North Carolina’s Atrium Health Carolinas Medical Center, Duke University Hospital, Novant Health and WakeMed. The Markup found that 33 of the top 100 hospitals in America use the Meta Pixel.

Also in 2022, Meta was sued in the Northern District of California after a Facebook user began receiving targeted ads for heart and knee conditions she entered in her private patient portal at the University of California, San Francisco Medical Center.

Atrium’s actions, according to the lawsuit, violated those patients’ expectations of privacy and constituted “criminal conduct.”

Atrium Health did not immediately respond to a request for comment.