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Angry Text Message Recipient Loses Court Challenge On Flu Shot Reminder

January 29, 2018

It’s flu season again. Your PCP at WPMG is thinking of you!

So began the health care provider’s text message that prompted this month’s Second Circuit decision applying the Telephone Consumer Protection Act to a flu shot reminder, Latner v. Mount Sinai Health System, Inc.

Plaintiff had gone to defendant West Park Medical Group (WPMG) in 2003 for a routine health examination. While there, he provided contact information including his cell phone number, and signed, among other forms, a notification record that consented to defendants using his health information “for payment, treatment and hospital operations purposes.”

In 2011, defendants hired a third party to send mass messages, including flu shot reminder texts for WPMG. In 2014, plaintiff received the text message above, which also stated: Please call us at 212-247-8100 to schedule an appointment for a flu shot. Defendants had sent flu shot reminder texts to all active patients of WPMG who had visited the office within the prior three years. Plaintiff had visited the office in 2011, declining immunizations.

Plaintiff alleged a violation of the Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA), which makes it unlawful to send texts or place calls to cell phones through automated telephone dialing systems, unless the recipient consents or an exemption applies.

The Second Circuit engaged in a two-step process to decide that the defendants did not violate the TCPA. First, the Court held that the flu shot reminder text message was within the scope of an FCC Telemarketing Rule providing that written consent was not needed for text messages that deliver a health care message made by, or on behalf of, a HIPAA covered agency.

The Court next determined that, although the FCC Telemarketing Rule exempts written consent, text messages within the healthcare exception are still covered by the TCPA’s general consent requirement. The Court held, however, that plaintiff had given his prior express consent by providing his cell phone number, acknowledging receipt of privacy notices, and agreeing that defendants could share his information for treatment purposes and to recommend possible treatment alternatives or health-related benefits and services.

The lesson of this case: the pile of forms you sign on the clipboard in the waiting room may lead to texted health care messages down the road.