After an investigative journalism outlet revealed last June that hospital websites were sharing patient data with Facebook parent company Meta, IT staff at Chapel Hill, N.C.-based UNC Health jumped into action to see if the health system was using the tracking pixels, WRAL reported Feb. 8.
An IT manager told other UNC Health officials he didn't find the pixels on the health system's MyChart patient portal, but that its website "lights up like a Christmas tree with them," according to emails obtained by the news outlet. The collected data is said to have included things people searched for, such as patient resources and the "find-a-doctor" tool.
UNC paused one of the pixels about 12 hours after the June story by The Markup, according to WRAL's reporting.
"When the story first appeared last summer of some hospitals sharing [protected health information] with Meta, we quickly evaluated our use of Meta Pixels on unchealthcare.org and confirmed no evidence of Meta Pixel on our sites that contain patient data," a UNC Health spokesperson emailed Becker's.
"Use of Meta Pixel was limited to our public-facing website, which was only used for anonymized marketing and site-usage analytics. We confirmed with our third-party vendor that no identified information was captured or shared with any parties. We remain confident that our conservative approach to using tracking pixels did not jeopardize any patient information."