Australian online health marketplace HealthEngine Pty Ltd has been ordered by the Federal Court to pay $2.9 million in penalties for the company’s actions that included passing on consumer data to third-party private health insurance brokers without adequate disclosure.
The decision is the result of the legal proceedings launched by the Australian Competition & Consumer Commission (ACCC), which began investigating HealthEngine in July 2018. Aside from the monetary punishment, the health booking platform also has to contact affected consumers and provide details of how they can regain control of their personal information.
According to the ACCC, HealthEngine admitted giving non-clinical personal details – names, birthdates, phone numbers, and email addresses – of more than 135,000 patients to insurance brokers between April 30, 2014 and June 30, 2018 without adequately disclosing the action to the platform’s users.
Used by over a million consumers every month, HealthEngine’s booking system connects patients to an online healthcare directory spanning more than 70,000 health practices and practitioners in Australia.
“These penalties and other orders should serve as an important reminder to all businesses that if they are not upfront with how they will use consumers’ data, they risk breaching the Australian Consumer Law,” said ACCC chair Rod Sims. “The ACCC is very concerned about the potential for consumer harm from the use or misuse of consumer data.”
It was noted that HealthEngine earned over $1.8 million from its arrangements with private health insurance brokers during the abovementioned period. It’s not clear whether brokers themselves will be on the hook for HealthEngine’s conduct.
The company also admitted manipulating patient reviews between March 31, 2015 and March 01, 2018 by editing around 3,000 reviews to either embellish them or remove negative aspects. Additionally, HealthEngine did not publish around 17,000 reviews during the timeframe, misrepresenting to consumers the reasons for not publishing a rating for some health or medical practices.
Sims went on to state: “The ACCC was particularly concerned about HealthEngine’s misleading conduct in connection with reviews it published, because patients may have visited medical practices based on manipulated reviews that did not accurately reflect other patients’ experiences.”
HealthEngine, which admitted liability, will also be paying a contribution to the ACCC’s legal costs.
