Oak Street Health Grooms New Patients by Violating TCPA, Alleges Chicago Class Action

Oak Street Health operates primary care centers serving Medicare-eligible patients, and one of its strategies for luring new patients is telemarketing via “unsolicited cold calls,” alleged Kimberly Starling’s Telephone Consumer Protection Act class action Monday (docket 1:24-cv-04782) in U.S. District Court for Northern Illinois in Chicago. Because Medicare is generally reserved to individuals 65 and older, Oak Street “targets one of America’s most vulnerable populations -- its senior citizens,” said the Southlake, Texas, resident’s complaint. Many of these calls are made to individuals who listed their phone numbers on the national do not call registry because they didn’t want to receive “these types of telemarketing calls,” it said. The plaintiff listed her residential phone number on the national DNC registry in May 2021, yet she began receiving Oak Street’s telemarketing cold calls in October 2023, said her complaint. Despite Starling’s demand that Oak Street stop phoning her, she received multiple more calls from the company, including two calls Jan. 29 that were roughly 90 minutes apart, it said. Upon information and belief, the defendant uses telemarketing “fronters” to cold-call individuals and identify potential Medicare members eligible for its services as a part of its advertising efforts, it said. The plaintiff didn’t provide “prior express invitation or permission or consent” for Oak Street’s calls, it said. The company’s TCPA violations were negligent, or alternatively, they were willful and knowing, in which case she seeks treble damages of $1,500 for each infraction, it said. Starling and the class members were damaged by the violations because their privacy was “improperly invaded,” and Oak Street’s calls “temporarily seized and trespassed upon the use of their phones and phone lines,” it said.