Over the past year, Facebook and health care networks have faced increasing scrutiny (and legal troubles) for the sharing of sensitive patient data. The latest such case comes from Louisville, where the mother of a pediatric psychiatric patient has filed a lawsuit against a major health system for allegedly violating federal privacy laws by sharing her daughter’s info with Facebook.

According to the suit, everything from diagnoses to prescription information was sent to Facebook through its Meta Pixel tracking tool, which is embedded in hundreds of thousands of pages across the web. Notably, this tool is often built in to forms that patients must fill out for their health care team.

“Despite knowing the risk that it was unlawfully transmitting personal health information, U of L Health chose to implement the Meta Pixel on its website and patient portal because it financially benefits U of L,” the suit alleges. “Specifically, U of L Health… gains information about its patients that can be used to target them with advertisements as well as measure the results of advertisement efforts.”

While most of these suits have so far targeted the health care companies themselves, it’s not a stretch to imagine that Facebook could soon find itself embroiled in a legal scandal too.

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