n almost every other industry, pixel tracking is just good business. It’s the standard mechanism that allows marketing teams to attribute conversions, retarget visitors and measure ROI. It is relatively benign code that keeps the digital economy turning. But in the healthcare industry, that same benign code can turn malignant.

The tension between digital marketing and patient privacy has snapped. What was once a gray area is now a primary target for class-action litigation and regulatory enforcement. If your organization uses third-party tracking technologies, like the Meta Pixel or Google Analytics, on your patient portals or scheduling pages, you aren’t just tracking user behavior, you are creating a gap in your healthcare compliance software strategy.

The Invisible PHI Leak

The core issue is that pixels are designed to scrape data: IP addresses, device identifiers and page views. When a patient visits a healthcare provider’s webpage to schedule an appointment for a specific condition, the data combination of that person’s identity and what they are looking to do effectively becomes Protected Health Information (PHI). When that data is sent to an advertising platform like Meta or Google without explicit HIPAA-compliant consent, you have an unauthorized disclosure that threatens data security.

This isn’t a hypothetical risk. The fallout is already hitting healthcare companies hard.

The Cost of Complacency

We are seeing a deluge of enforcement actions and settlements that prove no organization is too large or too small to be targeted by a healthcare attorney or federal auditor. 

1. The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has taken an aggressive stance.

• GoodRx: In a landmark move, the FTC hit GoodRx with a $1.5 million penalty for sharing user health data with Facebook and Google, marking the first enforcement of the Health Breach Notification Rule.
• Cerebral: The telehealth startup was slapped with a $7 million fine and a permanent ban on using health data for advertising after it was found sharing sensitive patient answers with platforms like TikTok and Snapchat.

2. Plaintiffs’ attorneys are now actively scanning hospital websites for pixels.

• Advocate Aurora Health: Agreed to a massive $12.2 million settlement after a breach involving pixel tracking affected 3 million patients. The data shared with Meta and Google included appointment times, procedure and physician identities.
• Pomona Valley Hospital Medical Center: Recently agreed to pay $600,000 to settle claims that the use of Meta Pixel on its public website and patient portal violated wiretapping laws.
• Goshen Health & Hancock Health: Both Indiana systems faced lawsuits alleging their patient portals disclosed PHI to third parties, resulting in settlements that included cash payments to patients and credit monitoring services.

How Onspring Helps You Regain Control

Healthcare organizations rarely get into trouble because someone intentionally skirted the rules. More often, it is because teams were working toward different goals without a shared compliance program to keep everyone aligned. Marketing wants better attribution. Compliance teams want defensible governance. Security wants to understand data flows. Privacy wants evidence that PHI isn’t escaping the system. Vendor management wants to know what third parties are actually doing with company data. When these silos exist, it creates friction within healthcare operations, making it difficult to maintain oversight.

Without a centralized compliance software to see what technologies are in use, even routine tools like pixels can slip through unnoticed.

Onspring brings those functions into the same loop so decisions about tracking technologies are made with full visibility, not after the fact.

A Clearer Picture of What’s Running Across Your Digital Ecosystem

With Onspring, organizations maintain a single, living inventory of tracking technologies, data-sharing agreements and third-party tools, including those introduced by external agencies. Instead of relying on ad hoc checks or informal conversations, every script, service and third party has a defined place in your governance process. This ensures that as regulatory changes occur, your digital footprint remains documented and defended.

A More Connected Approach to Third-Party Oversight

Marketing agencies, analytics partners and digital advertisers often introduce tracking scripts as part of their standard playbook. In Onspring, those engagements route through the same third-party risk process used for any other vendor. That means privacy, compliance, security and marketing each have visibility into how data may flow, what risks exist and what approvals are required before anything goes live.

A Structured Response When Something Goes Wrong

If a tracking technology is discovered where it shouldn’t be, Onspring’s incident reporting capabilities help teams quickly understand the scope, document what happened and guide the required steps for investigation and reporting. By triggering an automated risk assessment the moment a gap is identified, teams can move away from scrambling across spreadsheets and instead manage every action and decision in one place.

A Shared System of Record that Strengthens Trust

Centralizing these compliance workflows does more than prevent surprises. It builds a common framework where teams work from the same data, follow the same processes and close the same risk gaps together. That alignment reduces the chance that something as routine as a pixel becomes a compliance event.

By moving pixel tracking and similar tools out of the shadows and into a unified healthcare software solution for GRC, organizations gain the oversight they need to protect patient privacy, support company goals and keep regulators out of their inbox. It is a practical step toward ensuring that the technologies powering digital engagement don’t quietly undermine the trust your organization depends on.