Californians Sue Over AI Tool That Records Doctor Visits (arstechnica.com) 34
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Several Californians sued Sutter Health and MemorialCare this week over allegations that an AI transcription tool was used to record them without their consent, in violation of state and federal law. The proposed class-action lawsuit, filed on Wednesday in federal court in San Francisco, states that, within the past six months, the plaintiffs received medical care at various Sutter and MemorialCare facilities.
During those visits, medical staff used Abridge AI. According to the complaint, this system "captured and processed their confidential physician-patient communications. Plaintiffs did not receive clear notice that their medical conversations would be recorded by an artificial intelligence platform, transmitted outside the clinical setting, or processed through third-party systems." The complaint adds that these recordings "contained individually identifiable medical information, including but not limited to medical histories, symptoms, diagnoses, medications, treatment discussions, and other sensitive health disclosures communicated during confidential medical consultations."
In recent years, Abridge's software and AI service have been rapidly deployed across major health care providers nationwide, including Kaiser Permanente, the Mayo Clinic, Duke Health, and many more. When activated, the software captures, transcribes, and summarizes conversations between patients and doctors, and it turns them into clinical notes. Sutter Health began partnering with Abridge two years ago. Sutter spokesperson Liz Madison said the company is aware of the lawsuit. "We take patient privacy seriously and are committed to protecting the security of our patients' information," Madison said. "Technology used in our clinical settings is carefully evaluated and implemented in accordance with applicable laws and regulations."
During those visits, medical staff used Abridge AI. According to the complaint, this system "captured and processed their confidential physician-patient communications. Plaintiffs did not receive clear notice that their medical conversations would be recorded by an artificial intelligence platform, transmitted outside the clinical setting, or processed through third-party systems." The complaint adds that these recordings "contained individually identifiable medical information, including but not limited to medical histories, symptoms, diagnoses, medications, treatment discussions, and other sensitive health disclosures communicated during confidential medical consultations."
In recent years, Abridge's software and AI service have been rapidly deployed across major health care providers nationwide, including Kaiser Permanente, the Mayo Clinic, Duke Health, and many more. When activated, the software captures, transcribes, and summarizes conversations between patients and doctors, and it turns them into clinical notes. Sutter Health began partnering with Abridge two years ago. Sutter spokesperson Liz Madison said the company is aware of the lawsuit. "We take patient privacy seriously and are committed to protecting the security of our patients' information," Madison said. "Technology used in our clinical settings is carefully evaluated and implemented in accordance with applicable laws and regulations."
Hacked (Score:5, Informative)
"We take patient privacy seriously and are committed to protecting the security of our patients' information." — Sutter, 2026
"Sutter Health, a healthcare provider serving Northern California, has recently confirmed that patient data was compromised in a hacking incident [that affected] 84,000 patients." — HIPAA Journal, 2023
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
I was drugged by a local hospital after taken to the ER and I'd refused treatment at that hospital. The drug is known to cause memory loss. I was, according to medical records, "uncooperative". So? I have a right to refuse treatment. Had there been video of the incident, it never would have happened in the first place because they would have been on camera committing malpractice. I also refused treatment because it was this hospital that caused the permanent problem I have in the first place. I wouldn't hav
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I just read that "non-profit" Kaiser health system made $9.3 billion dollars net profit last year.
At the same time it has been subject to scrutiny by agencies and unions for cutting back services, pay, staffing, etc. all of which compromise care.
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Do you have a suggestion for a solution? Maybe going back to hand-written notes placed in a manila folder? That way, only everyone that walks into a doctor's office every day would have access.
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"We take patient privacy seriously and are committed to protecting the security of our patients' information." — Sutter, 2026
"Sutter Health, a healthcare provider serving Northern California, has recently confirmed that patient data was compromised in a hacking incident [that affected] 84,000 patients." — HIPAA Journal, 2023
Of course they care about the security of their patients information... but not as much as they care about saving pennies on security.
Avoidable (Score:4, Informative)
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I've been doing a lot of work with locally run open source models for document processing, summarizing etc.
* did it support advertising?
* did you have a module to send the data to insurance companies for the aim of increasing premiums?
* was there an automated module to inform employers of potential health risks that might increase their premiums so that the patients could be fired before these risks actualized?
* have you considered the value in extra plausibly deniable drugs sales to be achieved through advanced AI hallucinations?
* have you considered and implemented interfaces to support future monetization opp
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will the hit squad be lead by Zuck's AI in a robot body?
if it acts somewhat human you can be sure it's the AI
https://www.theverge.com/tech/... [theverge.com]
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will the hit squad be lead by Zuck's AI in a robot body?
I think by that time he's going to have started cloning himself so he doesn't need to deal with any insubordination, so likely yes.
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Good for you. But I want my doctor well versed in medicine, not system administration.
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So? (Score:5, Informative)
I hope the plaintiffs win, and win big. But unless and until the awards in cases like this are big enough to pose an existential threat to the offenders, companies will never take these concerns seriously.
These fuckers will need the corporate equivalent of a good solid kick in the nuts - perhaps several times - before they start to behave responsibly. But given that the US is a full-fledged broligarchic corporatocracy, that well-deserved crotch shot is extremely unlikely.
Re:So? (Score:4, Interesting)
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I like your idea, but with the current regime in power at the federal level, class action reform will never happen. Also the 10% of the take going to the lawyers will probably discourage a lot of law practices from pursuing class action claims (which might be a feature, not a bug). Some servoing of this "off-of-the-top" amount may be necessary. Maybe it could be initially be set to 10%, but it could go up or down depending on how hard the lawyers work or how profitable their respective law firms are.
False Accusations (Score:2)
I know a private practice doc who uses one after having some obviously bogus allegations made against him by a miscreant and her ambulance chaser.
The big hospital systems can afford to have a second person in the room.
I don't like anything about the current system but having a third party doing the recording removes allegations of editing by local recordings.
There are compromise cryptosystem that can handle both concerns ... gotta get one done soon if nobody else will do it (hashes of hashes of hashes).
dumb transcription errors (Score:4, Funny)
One transcription service incorrectly noted a patient was transsexual because they were a female mailman.
https://www.reddit.com/r/mildl... [reddit.com]
If they only knew (Score:2)
...that surgeons record even what they are doing to the inside of your body during operations, Surgical Black Box recording is more and more common, especially for malpractice avoidance.
AI Transcription & data sharing are entrenched (Score:2)
into a lot of the medical services now. Private medical practitioners, Amazon's One-Medical, and most hospitals use them to relieve staff of having to take notes. Even the HBO show the Pitt has a season story line about how the transcription errors take more time to correct than taking notes in the first place.
I am willing to bet that in many cases patients inadvertently agreed to allow AI transcription. The tablets handed out in waiting rooms before treatment DO NOT LET YOU EDIT THE AGREEMENTS. And if yo
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Wow, you get tablets? At a couple medical offices I've been at they just tell you to sign the signature pad. The document you're signing is on the secretary's monitor, facing only her, and with a privacy screen protector. I've asked to see what I was signing. They couldn't figure out how to show it to me. One office said they could print it out after I signed it. The other office said I had to go online to read it. Either way, none of them could show me what I was signing before I did so. There's n
Yet they want cheaper healthcare... (Score:1)
Folks, people are *expensive*. Really expensive. If you want less expensive healthcare, we're going to need to implement a lot of AI to handle the paperwork which is a huge time sink. If you have a problem with a healthcare professional knowing things that have to be noted, you have two options: 1. Don't go to get care. 2. Don't talk about those things. And certainly don't look at how much your insurance company knows because the law gives them full access.
no remove the middle men and remove the profit (Score:2)
no remove the middle men and remove the profit
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If only things were that simple.
Right now, if you add up all the costs in premiums, copays, and coinsurance one has to pay (Especially of you're older) then add that to to state and local income tax you have to pay, I reckon that a significant number of us would have a higher effective tax rate then the income taxes which EU citizens are paying.
So much for the United States being known for low income taxes.
So why is this?
Well, there are a number of reasons:
1. Overduplication of medical facilities and lack o
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Not disagreeing on that either. However, it's estimated the nurses spend more time on paperwork than on patient care. We're going to have to automate to the limit to get costs down, and provide more transparent pricing.
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The US national average starting nurse salary is $31-$34 an hour. They talk to you for 5 to 15 minutes at the start of an appointment. That's not where most of your medical costs are coming from, at least not for standard Doctor appointments. I don't know the scope of their work at hospitals.
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The argument that AI will reduce costs is deeply flawed, because it assumes that the interactions between insurers and providers will remain unchanged other than AI "doing the paperwork". That is very unlikely to be true, because both providers and insurers are likely to deploy AI to manage the new flows of information.
You're already seeing it in billing. On the provider side, AI goes through and harvests diagnoses that can justify higher billing ("increased coding intensity") while insurers are deploying
Memorial of what? (Score:2)
"MemorialCare"
Does not sound like a healthcare company for the living. Are these private equity backed healthcare companies or non-profits as they should be?
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Non-profit as it should be... HA! ROFLMAO!
The "non-profit" hospitals will see you, sure, and diagnose that your leg is indeed broken, and needs pins and a couple plates... while that's all (the diagnosis and the hospital bed and a couple Vicodin a day and all that) is covered under "non-profit", the surgical team and all the hardware and anesthesia and everything isn't (it's in the fine print) covered under that "non-profit" heading... "that'll be $200,000".
There is no truly non-profit (I know... I worked
A little context for how it is getting used (Score:2)
My wife is an emergency physician, so I have seen how Abridge tends to be used.
Previously, doctors would come home after a 12 hour shift and have to write notes on dozens of patients. Even if the care they provided was perfectly suitable, it was easy to forget to document certain things because they were tired and all the patients start to blend together. This could lead doctors who saw the patient later being confused as to why certain decisions were made.
Now they have a little device that listens to their
California wiretap laws (Score:2)
IIRCC California is a two party consent state. That means to record what is expected to be a private conversation you MUST have explicit consent from both parties or your in violation of the law.
If your in public it is considered that there is no expectation of privacy so your OK filming/recording LEOs and such. But in a doctor's office the would be a reasonable expectation of privacy.
Unless those laws were amended or struck down then if the patients were not clearly informed that they were being recorded
They are liars (Score:2)
I recently had a visit at Sutter. They asked for my ok for "Dr. X using AI". I said NO. When I later looked at the chart notes, the chart notes said I had given consent.