Kaiser Permanente (“Kaiser”) is one of the largest not-for-profit health plans and health maintenance organizations (“HMO”) in the United States. In addition to providing health insurance and healthcare directly to its members through over 700 medical offices and 39 hospitals, Kaiser also offers its members the use of its online patient portal at https://healthy.kaiserpermanente.org/, which Kaiser advertises as a convenient way for its members to access a multitude of services such as scheduling appointments, viewing test results, discussing treatment options, managing prescriptions, and directly communicating with healthcare providers.
However, Kaiser may be violating the privacy rights of its members by collecting, tracking, and sharing sensitive personal information, including health data such as health conditions, treatments, medications, and payment details with third parties without their members’ knowledge or consent via third party software embedded in the code of its webpages. If you are a Kaiser member and you researched health conditions and treatments, viewed test results, ordered medications, or communicated with doctors online in Kaiser’s online patient web portal, you may qualify for a claim under state privacy laws of up to $5,000. The claim alleges that Kaiser Permanente members who logged in and used the services available on Kaiser’s patient web portal had their sensitive personal and medical data shared with third party advertisers like Google, Bing, and Adobe without their knowledge or consent. The claim alleges further that Kaiser failed to comply with its members’ reasonable expectations of privacy concerning their sensitive medical information. Labaton is pursuing arbitration claims against Kaiser Permanente for violating the federal and state wiretapping and medical information privacy laws, which award damages of up to $5,000, as well as additional state consumer protection laws.