Nearly 50 hospitals and health systems had publicly accessible webpages that revealed healthcare workers’ schedules and, in some cases, cellphone numbers through workforce management platform QGenda, The Philadelphia Inquirer reported Aug. 31.
The publication identified public QGenda pages associated with organizations including Penn Medicine, based in Philadelphia; Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia; ChristianaCare, based in Wilmington, Del.; Johns Hopkins Medicine, based in Baltimore; University of California San Francisco; and Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles. At Penn and CHOP, systemwide QGenda landing pages were publicly accessible, while at some other organizations only schedules for individual departments or services surfaced.
At least 10 hospitals and health systems, including Johns Hopkins and UCSF, removed the public links or added password requirements after being contacted by the Inquirer. CHOP also notified employees that it had updated access to the scheduling platform as a precaution.
The pages included schedules for physicians, nurse practitioners, social workers and other hospital employees. The links did not appear in Google searches, but the Inquirer reported that basic AI tools could surface live schedules. The publication used OpenAI’s Codex to identify public QGenda landing pages nationwide.
It remains unclear how the schedules became publicly accessible, how long they were available, whether hospital administrators knew the pages could be viewed without a login or whether anyone accessed the information. QGenda did not respond to the Inquirer’s requests for comment.
QGenda offers a feature called QuickLinks that allows staff members without QGenda accounts to access schedules. QGenda also offers controls that can limit access to public-facing scheduling pages to devices connected to a secure network.
ChristianaCare said it recently became aware that the pages were public and worked with QGenda to address the issue. The health system said it was not aware of any effects on caregivers, clinicians, patient care or operations.
Penn Medicine said it uses QGenda to support communication among care teams and is adding controls as online risks evolve. CHOP said the QGenda platform does not contain patient information and that the health system continually assesses its systems and technologies for privacy, security and operational needs.
The publicly available information raised security and privacy concerns because work schedules, locations and cellphone numbers could potentially be used to target healthcare workers. Security and privacy experts told the Inquirer that hospitals should scrutinize the platforms they use and minimize information that could be weaponized against employees.
Editor’s note: Becker’s has reached out to QGenda for comment and will update this story if additional information is provided.
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