Omnichannel healthcare marketing is a relatively new strategy that can help healthcare marketers achieve success.
Marketers need to leverage a variety of marketing tactics to reach and communicate with their patients. Omnichannel marketing involves the integration of digital channels and traditional media to provide a consistent and personalized experience across all channels to drive marketing success.
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Dental practices face enormous challenges when it comes to acquiring new patients and expanding their practices. Marketing is all but essential to make sure your practice thrives. This article discusses how dental practices can thrive using personalized HIPAA marketing without running afoul of HIPAA regulations.
Marketing is essential to growing any business successfully, but operating in highly regulated spaces such as dentistry, there are serious compliance considerations. Whether responding to an online patient review or trying to increase patient engagement through marketing campaigns, misunderstanding HIPAA can lead to patient privacy breaches that place your finances and reputation at risk.
The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA), which controls what and when patient information may be shared for marketing purposes, was enacted before the electronic age. As a result, it can be challenging to find information regarding appropriate marketing practices using modern social and software technologies.
HIPAA is a complicated set of rules and regulations. When it comes to patient marketing, there are many misconceptions about what is and isn’t allowed. Here we unpack a few of the most common misunderstandings as they apply to HIPAA-compliant marketing.
1. As long as patient consent is acquired, HIPAA doesn’t matter
Acquiring patient consent does not remove the organization’s obligation to secure protected health information (PHI) under the law. If PHI is improperly accessed, it is a breach and can lead to severe consequences.
2. Marketing emails do not need encryption
Many marketing emails imply a relationship between patients and providers and, as such, can often be classified as PHI. HIPAA regulations require PHI to be encrypted in transit and at rest.
3. Personalizing marketing emails is a HIPAA violation
Marketing emails can be personalized as long as the proper safeguards and precautions are in place to protect patient privacy and meet compliance requirements.
When using a HIPAA-compliant email marketing solution, you can leverage the data and information you have about your patients to increase engagement.
Improve marketing results and drive better patient outcomes by connecting to your patients with messaging that matters to them. Using PHI to segment and personalize emails delivers results for both your practice and your patients.
In May 2022, Dr. U. Phillip Igbinadolor, D.M.D. & Associates, a dental practice with offices in Charlotte and Monroe, North Carolina, allegedly impermissibly disclosed a patient’s protected health information on a webpage in response to a negative online review. The Office for Civil Rights imposed a $50,000 civil penalty.
In the last decade, patients have significantly changed how they seek healthcare. Most patients now consult digital channels as a primary source of information when searching for new treatments and providers. The information they find via internet searches, social media, and review websites substantially influences their choice of provider. For dental marketers, this change has required a significant adjustment to their marketing strategies.
Starting a new marketing program requires the right tools. Do not choose a solution that prohibits you from using PHI in a way that is fully compliant.
Choosing the right email encryption solution is especially critical for dental organizations. HIPAA regulations, PHI risk, and improved patient engagement are absolute priorities. Not to mention the need for software that offers ease of use, simple integration, and high-level support.
LuxSci’s Secure Connector adds a layer of protection to Google Workspace and Microsoft 365 email accounts. Don’t leave your organization’s security up to employees. Prevent breaches by securing sensitive data by default. LuxSci is HITRUST certified and can meet compliance requirements for HIPAA, SOC, GDPR, and more.
Marketing your dental practice is no longer as simple as creating a listing in a directory or sending mail to potential patients. To remain competitive, practices must adopt online advertising techniques that offer a solid return on investment. The perils of possible HIPAA violations may dissuade some from taking the leap- but by properly vetting vendors, training staff, and selecting the right tools, it’s possible to engage patients and achieve results.
Non-compliance with HIPAA can easily lead to unintended breaches where data is exposed to unauthorized parties. This can be very expensive! Violating HIPAA can cost anywhere from $100 to $50,000 per violation (or per data record).
You don’t want to be caught in a situation where inaction, neglect, or lack of knowledge can result in violating HIPAA. Many small and large organizations are often unknowingly using systems in a way that is either already in breach or which results in frequent sporadic breaches.
Check your organization!
If any of the following scenarios apply to you, it is worth bringing them up the person responsible for compliance (your HIPAA Security Officer) to include in your mandatory yearly Risk Analysis. Is the risk of breach worth continuing with “business as usual?”
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You’ve just been told that your email marketing program is putting your company at risk of violating HIPAA. What now? If you want to continuing using email to communicate with patients, you must implement HIPAA-compliant email marketing.
Start by breaking down that goal into two components: becoming HIPAA-compliant and achieving your HIPAA marketing objectives. Setting up HIPAA-compliant systems and procedures will ensure your patient data is protected. However, you don’t have to let your marketing objectives suffer for the sake of security. Implementing a HIPAA-compliant marketing program can actually help you achieve better marketing results.
Ask yourself these 17 questions to ensure your email marketing plan aligns with your business goals and HIPAA.
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Email is an essential channel for most marketers but for healthcare they must use HIPAA compliant email marketing. HIPAA regulations raise many questions for healthcare marketers who need to execute email marketing campaigns without violating patient privacy.
HIPAA is a complicated law that offers a lot of guidance but does not require the use of any specific technologies to protect patient privacy. The ambiguity causes a lot of confusion for marketers trying to integrate email into their marketing strategy. This article addresses some frequently asked questions about HIPAA-compliant email marketing and offers advice for securing patient data and futureproofing your marketing.
Some marketers assume practice newsletters do not contain health information and, therefore, do not fall under HIPAA requirements. However, this assumption is often incorrect. Many are surprised to learn that protected health information can be implied from seemingly benign information.
In this way, many generic email newsletters often indirectly contain PHI because they are sent to lists of current patients. Email addresses are individually identifiable and combined with the email content; it may imply that they are patients of the practice. For example, say you send a “generic” newsletter to the patients of a dialysis clinic. An eavesdropper may be able to infer that the recipients receive dialysis. Therefore, the email reveals information about an individual’s health treatment, is PHI, and should be secured in compliance with HIPAA regulations.
In some cases, it can be complicated to determine what is PHI and what is not. Using a HIPAA-compliant marketing solution is best to avoid ambiguity and ensure security.
Unfortunately, using broadly popular email marketing platforms is not recommended. Many of these platforms were designed for e-commerce businesses and are not secure enough to meet HIPAA requirements. We do not recommend using a solution not specifically equipped to meet the healthcare industry’s unique security and compliance needs. To determine if your email marketing provider is compliant, they must meet three broad criteria at a minimum.
Not all vendors will be up to the task. Carefully vet your email marketing vendors to ensure they are taking steps to secure data and protect patient privacy.
API is an acronym that stands for “Application Programming Interface.” An email API gives applications (like CRMs, CDPs, or EHRs) the ability to send emails using data from the application. Email APIs also return campaign data to the platform or dashboards so you can assess the effectiveness of your marketing efforts. Trigger-based transactional or marketing emails are ideal for sending with an email API. In this situation, emails are sent when pre-determined conditions in the application are met. Healthcare organizations may use email APIs to send appointment reminders using electronic health records system data about a patient’s upcoming appointment.
Email APIs enable the automation of common email workflows. However, they are not interchangeable with email marketing platforms. Email APIs do not include the contact management systems standard in most email marketing platforms because all that data lives within the application they connect to. In addition, email API tools typically do not include drag-and-drop editor tools or other design features that help your emails stand out.
Encryption is an addressable standard under the HIPAA Security Rule, but that does not mean it is optional. The HIPAA Privacy Rule does not explicitly forbid unencrypted email. Still, it does state that “other safeguards should be applied to protect privacy reasonably, such as limiting the amount or type of information disclosed through the unencrypted email.”
In addition, the Department of Health and Human Services also states that “covered entities are permitted to send individuals unencrypted emails if they have advised the individual of the risk, and the individual still prefers the unencrypted email.” Some organizations use waivers to inform patients of the risks and acquire permission to send unencrypted emails.
However, we do not recommend this approach for several reasons:
Yes, but they must be fully informed of the risks and sign waivers acknowledging them. The caveats in the previous answer apply. It’s always better to utilize an encryption tool to protect patient data.
Microsoft 365 can be configured with Office Message Encryption (OME) to comply with HIPAA. However, the program is not well-suited to send marketing emails. OME primarily relies on portal pickup encryption, in which the message is stored securely on a server and requires the recipient to log in to the portal to read the email. If you are a marketer trying to increase engagement, the portal adds a barrier to access that many will not cross. Light-PHI marketing messages are best sent using TLS encryption. TLS-encrypted messages arrive in the recipient’s inbox just like a regular email and do not require a user to log in to read the message.
In addition, Microsoft 365 is not configured to send high volumes of email. If you plan to send large marketing campaigns, you could unintentionally disrupt regular business communications by sending all the messages through the same infrastructure. You should separate your business and marketing email sending to protect your IP reputation and achieve your desired sending throughput.
Email marketing in healthcare is not restricted to boring practice newsletters. When you utilize tools that enable the use of PHI in your targeting and personalization efforts, the sky is the limit. With consumer preferences shifting toward digital communications, marketers willing to utilize the email channel and tactics like segmentation and personalization can see better results.
Email is an excellent way to communicate with patients. A sampling of ways that healthcare marketers can use email include:
HIPAA can be difficult to understand, but choosing the right tools and adequately vetting your vendors makes it easy to execute HIPAA-compliant email marketing campaigns. If you are interested in learning more about LuxSci’s easy-to-use, Secure Marketing platform, please contact our sales team.
