ByMonica Hunter-Hart,
Forbes Staff.
I
magine you’ve confided in your doctor about a sensitive medical issue. You haven’t even disclosed the condition to your family. Then, a week later, you get a call from a lawyer who asks to chat about it.
According to the largest electronic health records system in the country, Epic Systems, scenarios like this may be occurring right now. On Tuesday, the healthcare software giant filed a lawsuit in the Central District of California alleging that “bad actors” have been marauding as medical treatment facilities in order to pull and then misuse at least 295,000 of its patient records. Epic claims those companies were then inappropriately monetizing that patient data—for example, by selling it to lawyers looking for people to join class action lawsuits.
