A lawsuit filed this week in Westmoreland County Common Pleas Court alleges Excela Health disclosed personal patient information to Facebook and Google.
The court filing on behalf of two unnamed Westmoreland County residents claims the health system allowed confidential medical and personal data collected through Excela’s web portal for patients to be secretly shared with the internet giants, which use tools designed to target advertising to online users.
Bochetto and Lentz, a Philadelphia-based law firm, filed the proposed class action four-count lawsuit against Excela seeking compensatory damages in excess of $4 million and additional punitive damages.
Excela spokeswoman Robin Jennings declined to respond to the allegations in the lawsuit.
“We do not comment on pending litigation,” Jennings said.
In February the law firm filed a nearly identical lawsuit against Commonwealth Health, which operates hospitals in Northeast Pennsylvania.
The Excela lawsuit is one of dozens filed over the last several years throughout the U.S. after privacy concerns surfaced related to Facebook’s data collection and sharing application used by hospitals as part of their online patient portals.
A similar federal lawsuit was filed in 2020 against UPMC, alleging the Pittsburgh-based medical provider shared patient medical information with Facebook. That case is pending.
Excela was aware but did not inform patients or attempt to restrict use of code in its software that shared the data, the suit claims. It continued to do so as recently as February, the suit alleges.
Data culled from patients includes doctor searches, scheduling, treatments and other personal information related to someone’s medical conditions through visits to specific web pages on Excela’s online information system. The court filing alleges that Excela knowingly used software designed by Facebook and its parent company, Meta, that tracks patients through the hospital system’s website, records information that is accessed and provides the social media company with specific internet addresses of users.
“In other words, Facebook learns not just that patients are seeking treatment, but where and typically when they are seeking treatment, along with other information that patients would reasonably assume that Excela Health is not sharing with third-party marketing companies,” according to the lawsuit.
Patients are not told about the data collection and sharing, the suit claims.
The court filing said Excela benefited from revenue earned through advertising and that patients would have paid less for medical services without having their data shared with a third party.
Westmoreland County’s largest health care provider, Excela merged with Butler Health System in January.
Rich Cholodofsky is a Tribune-Review staff writer. You can contact Rich by email at rcholodofsky@triblive.com or via Twitter .