Wednesday, July 6, 2011

Walgreens sued for selling patient data to data mining companies

From kevinmd.com:

Walgreens is being sued by customers who are not happy that their prescription information – even though it has been de-identified – is being sold by Walgreens to data-mining companies.

The plaintiff group of customers is suing to share in the profits realized by Walgreens from trading in the de-identified data.

And healthcareitnews.com:

The suit cites Walgreen's 2010 annual filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, which lists "purchased prescription files" as intangible assets worth $749 million.



Yet another example of the type of "ethical business practices" you can expect from Walgreens. One would think you could trust a pharmacy to protect your data and only hold on to it for the purposes of serving you as a customer / patient, not profiting off it by selling it to data mining companies. Oh hell, who are we kidding... this is Walgreens we're talking about.

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