The HHS will soon start increasing its crackdowns on healthcare organizations that are disclosing patient information with third parties without consent through the use of tracking technologies, BankInfoSecurity reported April 21.
Melanie Rainer, director of HHS' Office for Civil Rights, said the agency has seen questionable use of these tracking technologies by healthcare organizations and is looking to make its first enforcement action against them soon.
"It's a priority area," Ms. Rainer said. "We're looking into organizations across the country."
This comes after a Health Affairs study found that 98.6 percent of U.S. hospital and health system websites implemented tracking technologies that sent patient data to third-party companies such as Alphabet, Meta and Adobe.