Recent TCPA Developments for Healthcare Providers

Healthcare providers are uniquely affected by the Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA), which regulates the manner in which a business may advertise its products and services to consumers by phone, text and fax.1 The TCPA is a strict liability statute that has been used with great success by plaintiffs’ attorneys to extract large settlements from businesses in a wide variety of industries. Although some healthcare communications are exempt from the TCPA, a 2015 Order from the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) appears to undercut that exemption. Healthcare providers are pushing back against the Order, which is presently on appeal. This article discusses recent developments in the TCPA sphere and analyzes how healthcare providers are uniquely affected by the statute.