Palantir Is Inside NYC Public Hospitals, Processing Your Health Records

TL;DR: NYC Health + Hospitals, the largest municipal healthcare system in the country, has paid Palantir nearly $4 million since 2023 to optimize billing. The contract allows Palantir to de-identify your protected health information and use it "for purposes other than research." The same company runs ICE's deportation targeting software, supplies systems to the NSA and Israeli military, and now sits inside hospitals serving over a million New Yorkers. If you've visited Bellevue, Elmhurst, Jacobi, or any of the 11 public hospitals since 2023, your health records may have been processed by a company that helps ICE find people to deport.

What The Contract Actually Says

On February 15, 2026, The Intercept published contracts obtained through MuckRock's FOIA request revealing Palantir's arrangement with NYC Health + Hospitals.

The key numbers:

Nearly $4 million paid to Palantir since 2023
Contract expires fall 2026
Purpose: "revenue cycle optimization"

What the software does: Palantir's system automatically scans patient health notes to "increase charges captured from missed opportunities." Translation: it reads your medical records to find services your doctor provided but forgot to bill for.

The data clause that matters: The contract permits Palantir to "de-identify PHI and utilize de-identified PHI for purposes other than research."

That's a big deal. Under normal HIPAA rules, healthcare providers can share de-identified data for research. This contract goes further: Palantir can use your de-identified health data for whatever they want, as long as they strip your name off first.

Why "De-Identified" Doesn't Mean "Safe"

The word "de-identified" sounds like privacy protection. It isn't.

A systematic review of re-identification attacks on health data found that scrubbed data can be re-identified through three main methods:

Insufficient de-identification: Names removed but birth dates, zip codes, or diagnoses left intact
Pseudonym reversal: Predictable patterns in how data was anonymized
Dataset combination: Matching "anonymous" health records against other databases

That last one is the big risk with Palantir specifically. Their entire business model is connecting data across multiple sources. They run the NSA's XKEYSCORE bulk surveillance program. They supply ICE's FALCON and ImmigrationOS platforms. They have access to Thomson Reuters CLEAR, driver's license databases, utility records, and (thanks to a data-sharing agreement we covered in January) Medicaid records for 80 million patients.

A company that specializes in connecting disparate datasets now has access to NYC hospital records it can "de-identify" and use "for purposes other than research." The contract doesn't specify what those purposes are.

Who Uses These Hospitals

NYC Health + Hospitals is the largest public healthcare system in the United States. It operates:

11 hospitals: Bellevue, Elmhurst, Harlem, Jacobi, Kings County, Lincoln, Metropolitan, North Central Bronx, Queens, South Brooklyn, and Woodhull
29 Gotham Health community clinics
5 long-term care centers

The patient population:

Over 1 million patients annually
More than 475,000 uninsured patients
Services interpreted in 190+ languages
$10.9 billion in annual revenue

These hospitals serve some of the city's most vulnerable communities. Elmhurst Hospital in Queens serves one of the most diverse immigrant populations in the country. Lincoln Medical Center in the Bronx serves predominantly low-income Hispanic and Black communities. These aren't places where patients have alternatives. They're where people go when they can't afford private care.

Now imagine telling those communities that their hospital gave their health records to the company that helps ICE decide which neighborhoods to raid.

What Else Palantir Does

This isn't Palantir's first government contract. It's their first known contract with a major public healthcare system.

Palantir's surveillance portfolio includes:

ICE ImmigrationOS: A $60 million "deportation operating system" that tracks, targets, and arrests immigrants. We covered this in detail
ICE ELITE: A mobile app that shows agents a map of deportation targets with "confidence scores" on each address. Addresses come partly from Medicaid data
NSA XKEYSCORE: Bulk surveillance program for analyzing internet traffic
U.S. Army Maven project: $10 billion Pentagon contract for AI and data analysis
Israeli military contracts: Undisclosed work with IDF

Palantir spokesperson Drew Messing told The Intercept the company "does not use or share hospital data outside the bounds of its contract." But the contract bounds are loose: they explicitly permit de-identification and reuse.

What Civil Liberties Groups Are Saying

Privacy and immigrant rights organizations responded immediately to The Intercept's report.

Beth Haroules, NYCLU:

"Sharing any New Yorkers' highly personal data from NYC Health & Hospitals with Palantir, a key player in the Trump administration's mass deportation effort, is reckless and puts countless lives at risk. New Yorkers must be able to seek healthcare without fear that their intimate medical information, or immigration status, will be delivered to the federal government."

Kenny Morris, American Friends Service Committee:

"The same company targeting neighbors for deportation is providing software for our hospitals."

Hannah Drummond, National Nurses United: Healthcare workers have expressed concern that patients may avoid seeking care if they fear their data could be used against them. This is exactly what happened when the Trump administration's "public charge" rule made immigrants afraid to use benefits they were entitled to.

NYC Health + Hospitals' Response

NYC Health + Hospitals spokesperson Adam Shrier defended the contract: "Palantir technology is strictly limited to revenue cycle optimization, helping close gaps between services delivered and charges captured."

That may be true today. But contracts can be amended. Data, once collected, can be subpoenaed. And de-identified data, once shared, can't be un-shared.

The contract expires in fall 2026. Whether it gets renewed is up to NYC Health + Hospitals leadership, and potentially the New York City Council if advocates apply enough pressure.

What You Can Do

If you've used NYC public hospitals since 2023:

Your health records have likely been processed by Palantir's system
Request a copy of your records from NYC H+H to see what's on file
Consider whether sensitive information (reproductive health, mental health, immigration status) was disclosed during visits
If you have concerns, document them. This could matter if legal challenges emerge

To push back on the contract:

Contact NYC Health + Hospitals directly: (844) 692-4692
Contact your City Council member about the contract renewal
Support organizations like NYCLU, ACLU, and National Nurses United that are tracking this
Attend healthcare worker union meetings. Many nurses oppose this arrangement

For healthcare workers:

Document any training or protocols involving Palantir systems
Know your union's position on data-sharing contracts
Consider how to counsel patients who ask about data privacy

The Bigger Picture

This isn't just about one contract. It's about the slow merging of healthcare data with surveillance infrastructure.

In January, we reported that ICE's ELITE app uses Medicaid data to generate deportation targeting maps. That data comes from the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services through a data-sharing agreement with DHS.

Now Palantir has a separate path into healthcare data: through hospital billing contracts. Same company, different entry point.

The through-line: healthcare data that patients disclosed to get treatment is being routed to a surveillance contractor. Whether that data ends up helping ICE depends on contract terms, legal interpretations, and how aggressively the company chooses to use the access it's been given.

When people fear their health data will be used against them, they stop going to the doctor. That's a public health crisis waiting to happen. And it's being built right now, one billing optimization contract at a time.

References

Published: February 18, 2026