Are Hospital Websites Upfront About User Privacy and Data Sharing?

MedPage Today April 11, 2024
Rachael Robertson

— New study finds many hospitals don’t have privacy policies on their websites

Nearly all hospital websites transferred user information to third parties, and almost one-third did not have a privacy policy, an analysis of hospital websites showed.

Of the 100 hospital websites analyzed, 96 transferred user information to third parties, but only 71 had privacy policies listed, researchers led by Matthew McCoy, PhD, of the department of medical ethics and health policy at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, reported in JAMA Network Open.

Using the American Hospital Association database, researchers identified all nonfederal acute care hospitals and their websites. Among them, they selected 100 hospitals for analysis with simple random sampling. The privacy policies were assessed by two...

Today's Sponsors

Today's Sponsor