Caught in the Web: Hospital Associations Sue OCR on Third-Party Web Tracking Guidance
Lexology November 7, 2023
On November 2, 2023, the American Hospital Association and Texas Hospital Association, in conjunction with the Texas Health Resources and United Regional Health Care System, filed suit against the Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services (“HHS”) and the Director of the HHS Office for Civil Rights (“OCR”) regarding OCR’s guidance on the use of online tracking technologies by HIPAA entities.[i] This action and its results will impact how healthcare entities must protect and may use certain information collected on their digital sites.
Lawsuit Details
As we covered in a previous blog post, OCR released guidance in December 2022 on the use of tracking technologies by HIPAA-regulated entities (the “Guidance”).[ii] The lawsuit challenges the portion of the Guidance...