‘Shut it off immediately’: The health industry responds to data privacy crackdown

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A series of federal data privacy crackdowns is complicating how health care companies market their services online

The Federal Trade Commission said it had fined telehealth provider GoodRx $1.5 million for sharing customer data with Google, Facebook and other firms. | Business Wire.

“Legal and compliance teams … are telling the marketing team that these tools are dead men walking, you need to shut it off immediately,” said Ray Mina, head of marketing at Freshpaint, a San Francisco firm that provides software to health care firms for managing customer marketing data. Last year, lawmakers proposed broad data privacy legislation, but Congress didn’t pass it. Agencies from HHS to the FTC are trying to expand data protections anyway, arguing that existing authorities provide them the power to do so, even though they haven’t used those authorities to broadly protect health data in the past.

Meanwhile, in February, the Federal Trade Commission said it had fined prescription discount site and telehealth provider GoodRx $1.5 million for sharing customer data with Google, Facebook and other firms. The agency said to expect similar enforcement to come and last month fined online therapy provider BetterHelp $7.8 million for sharing customer data after telling patients it would not.

BetterHelp said in a statement that it was accused of using “limited, encrypted information to optimize the effectiveness of our advertising campaigns so we could deliver more relevant ads and reach people who may be interested in our services.” But some health care executives aren’t so sure. “This has been the reason that my CEO can’t sleep at night,” said a lawyer for a telehealth company whom POLITICO granted anonymity so as not to draw attention to their client.

 

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