Signing a BAA Does Not Automatically Make You HIPAA Compliant

Healthcare Marketing
Pete Wermter
August 26, 2025

For healthcare organizations, choosing the right product and service vendors is essential for achieving HIPAA compliance. One of the key prerequisites of a HIPAA-compliant vendor is the willingness to sign a Business Associate’s Agreement (BAA): a legal agreement that outlines both parties’ responsibilities and liabilities in securing protected health information (PHI).

However, despite what some healthcare organizations have been led to believe, simply signing a BAA with a vendor doesn’t guarantee your use of their product or service will be HIPAA-compliant. In reality, a BAA is just the beginning, and there are several subsequent actions both healthcare organizations and their supply chain partners must take to ensure the compliant use of PHI, especially over communications channels like email.

With this in mind, this post explores some of the reasons why signing a BAA on its own doesn’t ensure the security of PHI and protect your organization from HIPAA violations.

Business Associate Agreements (BAAs) Explained

As touched upon above, a BAA is a legally-binding document established between a covered entity (CE), i.e., healthcare organizations, and a business associate (BA), i.e, any company that handles PHI in providing a CE with products or services. For a BA to handle patient or customer data on behalf of a CE, following HIPAA regulations, there must be a BAA in place.

A BAA details:

Each party’s roles, responsibilities, and liabilities in securing PHI.
The permitted uses of PHI by the BA and, conversely, restrictions on any other use.
The BA’s responsibilities in implementing appropriate administrative, technical, and physical security measures to best protect PHI.
The BA’s obligations to report any unauthorized use, disclosure, or breach of PHI.
That the BA is required to assist with patient rights support, i.e., data access, amendments, and accounting of disclosures, when appropriate.
The BA’s obligations in making records available for audits or investigations.
The CE’s right to terminate the contract if the BA fails to fulfil their obligations in safeguarding PHI.

Additionally, if a BA employs a third-party company, i.e., a subcontractor, that will have access to a CE’s PHI, they are required to establish a BAA with that company. This then makes the subcontractor a “downstream BA” of the CE, and subject to the same obligations and restrictions placed on the original BA. This ensures the security protections mandated by HIPAA flow down the entire chain of custody for sensitive patient and customer data.

Compliance Considerations After Signing a Business Associate Agreement (BAA)

Now that we’ve covered what a BAA is and the role it plays in ensuring data privacy, let’s move on to exploring some of the key things you have to do following the singing of a BAA to ensure HIPAA compliance.

1. Both Parties Must Implement HIPAA-Required Data Risk Mitigation Measures

First and foremost, while a BAA details each party’s respective responsibilities in implementing measures to protect PHI, both still actually need to implement those required security features to achieve HIPAA compliance.

The measures required under HIPAA’s Security Rule, including encryption and access control, are designed to mitigate and minimize the impact of data breaches. So, if a company suffers a security breach and later audits show the required security policies and controls were not in place, they would be subject to the consequences of HIPAA violations, including fines and reputation damage.

Also, while a BAA stipulates that the BA is responsible for implementing the HIPAA-required safeguards for the PHI under their care, it doesn’t specify exactly which security measures they must implement. Subsequently, that’s left to the BA to interpret based on their understanding of HIPAA requirements, and how they conduct their required risk assessments.

For example, if you have a BAA with your email services provider, that alone may not be enough to keep your company or organization HIPAA compliant. That’s because the provider may not have the security measures your organization needs, and instead have a carefully worded BAA that will leave you vulnerable.

Let’s say your email marketing service provider is a “semi-HIPAA compliant” provider. In these cases, they may not offer email encryption, or the necessary access control measures your organization needs to send PHI and other sensitive information safely. The so-called HIPAA compliance may be limited only to data stored at rest on their servers only.

In short, although a BAA outlines each party’s commitment to securing data, both parties still have to follow through on implementing risk mitigation measures. Additionally, though a healthcare company has its BA’s assurances that they’ll have the appropriate safeguards in place, CEs often only have limited visibility into its ongoing security posture. As a result, asking the right questions and working with a proven HIPAA compliant provider are critical steps healthcare organizations must take to ensure full compliance.

2. CEs Must Stick to “In-Scope” Services

While a BA may provide a CE with a range of services, many limit the coverage of their BAAs to particular “in-scope” services. As a result, if a healthcare organization were to use a service outside the coverage of the BAA, i.e., an “out-of-scope” service, they’d risk exposing patient data and incurring HIPAA violations.

And, even when a service is in-scope, the BA is still required to configure it properly for it to be compliant. These configurations could include:

Enabling encryption
Establishing access control
Activating multi-factor authentication (MFA)
Turning on audit logging

With this in mind, it’s crucial to ensure that the “complete” service or tool – not just a part of it – is covered by a BAA before using it to process PHI. Similarly, check the terms of your BAA for configuration or security best practices that offer guidance on fully HIPAA compliant use, and make sure your responsibilities as a CE are 100% clear.

3. Staff Must Be Trained to Securely Handle PHI

Another key reason that signing a BAA doesn’t automatically result in HIPAA compliance is the likely need for both parties to educate their staff on how to securely handle sensitive data, such as PHI.

Firstly, as discussed above, only some of the services offered by a BA may be covered by its agreement. Subsequently, a healthcare organization’s employees need to be sufficiently trained on the use and disclosure of PHI, namely, the services in which they’re permitted to process PHI and which, in contrast, services are non-compliant.

By the same token, as well as implementing the stipulated safeguards, BAs are responsible for training their workforce on how to use and, where appropriate, configure them. This will help ensure the limited, correct use and disclosure of PHI as allowed by the BAA.

4. Reporting Requirements

A BAA stipulates that a BA must notify the CE in the event of improper or unauthorized use of PHI. More specifically, this includes:

Reporting immediately any use or disclosure not permitted by the terms of the BAA.
Notifying the CE of security incidents resulting in the potential exposure of PHI.

However, the commitment to reporting in the BAA and the ability to deliver on that commitment are two different things entirely. Firstly, the BA must implement the policies and infrastructure that allow for timely incident reporting. This includes conducting risk analysis, implemeting continuous monitoring, and developing a robust incident response plan.

Additionally, a key aspect of prompt, comprehensive reporting includes the BA ensuring that their staff are sufficiently trained to detect and report security events. As part of their training on the secure handling of PHI, a BA’s employees must be able to recognize common security issues and threats, such as improper email configurations and phishing attempts, and how to report them.

5. Subcontractor BAAs

While CEs must sign BAAs with their BAs for the compliant use and disclosure of PHI, they don’t have to sign such agreements with any subcontractors the BA may employ. Instead, it’s the responsibility of the BA to enter into their own business associate agreements with their subcontractors. As a result, the original security obligations are passed all the way down the data’s chain of custody.

While a CE can take certain measures to enforce this, such as requesting proof of subcontractor BAAs – or even the ability to review subcontractors before beginning engagement – ultimately, they have little control over their security postures. Ultimately, this means that they have to trust that the original service BA does their due diligence in selecting security-minded subcontractors, with the right PHI safeguards in place.

HIPAA Compliance Beyond a BAA with LuxSci

LuxSci’s secure healthcare communications solutions – including HIPAA compliant email, text, marketing and forms – are designed specifically with the stringent compliance requirements of the healthcare industry in mind.

LuxSci also provides onboarding, comprehensive documentation, and support to ensure your infrastructure configurations align with HIPAA requirements, so you can confidently include PHI in your healthcare engagement communications campaigns.

Contact LuxSci today to discover more about achieving compliance beyond obtaining a BAA.

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How Hypersegmentation Drives Greater Healthcare Marketing Engagement

August 20, 2025
Pete Wermter

In healthcare marketing, effective engagement is crucial. It’s imperative that healthcare providers, payers, and suppliers know how to connect with their patients and customers, keeping them aware of all aspects of their healthcare journey – and empowering them to participate as much as possible.

This is where segmentation comes in.

Instead of sending out healthcare marketing email communications that appeal to as many people as possible, segmentation enables healthcare companies to appeal to specific individuals or groups. It opens the doors for scenarios in which patients and customers see a message in their inbox and think, ‘this message is for me’.

With that goal in mind, this post explores use cases and best practices in segmentation, why it’s so important for healthcare companies, and different ways that marketers can segment their audiences for optimal patient and customer engagement.

What is Segmentation?

Segmentation is the process of dividing your contact list, or audience, into smaller groups based on shared data, including protected health information (ePHI) characteristics. This could include demographics (age, gender, geographic location, etc.), medical conditions, risk factors, behaviors, and so on.

Why Segmentation is Essential in Healthcare Email Marketing

For healthcare organizations, segmentation is a highly effective, and essential, strategy for sending patients and customers personalized email messaging. Personalized emails are more relevant to the recipient, which greatly increases the chance of them capturing their attention and subsequent engagement.

This allows healthcare companies to successfully achieve the objective of their email campaigns, whether that’s reducing the number of appointment no-shows, increasing adherence to care plans, securing payments, or boosting sign-ups or sales. More importantly, patients and customers are more involved in their healthcare journey, staying on top of upcoming appointments, receiving applicable advice and recommendations, and becoming aware of products and services that may prove beneficial to their health, improving overall outcomes.

Additionally, dividing audiences into distinct groups gives healthcare organizations invaluable insights into the behaviour and needs of different segments at different stages of the healthcare journey.

For instance, an email campaign targeting a particular segment may reveal that they’re more likely to miss appointments than other groups. Similarly, segmentation may highlight that a certain high-risk group neglects to book recommended health screenings. Such insights enable healthcare providers, payers, and suppliers to improve their email engagement strategies, to drive more desirable outcomes and, ultimately more satisfied, loyal, and, above all, healthier patients and customers.

How Can Segmentation Aid HIPAA Compliance?

Another considerable benefit of segmentation for healthcare organizations is that it supports their HIPAA compliance efforts. Because segmentation necessitates setting precise rules that control which individuals receive particular emails, it greatly mitigates the risk of accidentally sending sensitive patient data to the wrong person.

Let’s say, for instance, that you want to conduct an email campaign targeting expectant mothers. By creating a segment comprised of pregnant patients or customers using the appropriate data field, you ensure that sensitive, pregnancy-related information is only sent to relevant parties. By reducing the likelihood of disclosing PHI to the wrong individuals, segmentation not only helps maintain regulatory compliance, but also preserves patient trust and confidence in your organization.

Different Ways to Segment Your Audience

Demographic Segmentation

This involves grouping individuals by shared demographic attributes such as:

Age
Gender
Location
Ethnicity
Education Level
Employment Status
Marital Status
Family Status
Socioeconomic Status (Income)
Spoken Languages / Preferred Language
Income
Insurance Coverage Type
Religious or Cultural Affiliations

Demographic information is a very powerful way to segment audiences to send them valuable, highly relevant information, for example:

Sending mammogram or prostate screening recommendations to women or men over a certain age.
Sending health alerts to people in a certain region or ZIP code in response to the emergence of a disease in their area (e.g., flu, a new COVID strain).
Making educational material easy to understand and informative.

Clinical Segmentation

Here, individuals are grouped according to medical criteria, such as:

Health conditions
Prescribed medications
Treatment plans
Recent surgeries or medical procedures
Recent lab test results
Hospitalization history
Vaccination status

This enables healthcare organizations to craft a wide range of specific communications that hone in on particular patients and customers, including:

Disease management and preventative care advice for people suffering from certain conditions, e.g, how diabetic patients can best monitor and manage their blood sugar.
Recovery guidance for post-operative patients.
Feedback requests for individuals on particular treatment plans, in an effort to optimize them.

Healthcare Journey Stage Segmentation

This divides individuals according to their position in their care journey within your organization.

For healthcare providers, new patients should receive onboarding materials, explanations of services and how to make the most of them, and similar materials that help them feel welcome and informed. Existing patients, meanwhile, can be further segmented into active, overdue (inactive), or high-risk groups – all of which have different needs and ways in which they should be communicated with:

Active patients: appointment reminders, educational materials, event and service recommendations, satisfaction surveys, etc.
Overdue and inactive patients: appointment or payment reminders, re-engagement communications, etc.
At risk patients: more frequent communications, care coordination messages, or support service referrals

Behavioral Segmentation

This method of segmentation is based on how recipients interact with emails or services, including:

How often they open emails.
If they click through on links.
If they use patient portals.
If they complete forms.
How often they attend scheduled appointments.

This segmentation empowers healthcare organizations to tailor the content type, frequency, and calls-to-action based on real engagement insights, and also carry out automated workflows based on each individual’s interaction with an email.

Supercharge Your Segmentation with LuxSci

LuxSci’s empowers healthcare organizations to effectively segment their contact lists into distinct target audiences for greater engagement in the following ways:

LuxSci Secure Marketing features powerful hypersegmentation capabilities for granular targeting that increase opens, clicks and conversions for your healthcare marketing campaigns.
LuxSci Secure High Volume Email enables companies to execute campaigns encompassing hundreds of thousands or millions of emails, targeting specific groups and audiences.
Easy integration with EHR, CDP, and CRM systems to leverages deeper levels data for highly targeting, highly personalized email campaigns.

Reach out today to learn how LuxSci can help you reach more patients and customers, drive more engagement and conversions, and improve overall outcomes.

How Automated Workflows Boost Engagement for Healthcare Marketing Campaigns

August 13, 2025
Pete Wermter

Due to the fact that it’s simple, instantaneous, cost-effective, and nearly universally adopted, email is an essential part of all healthcare marketing engagement strategies. However, consistent, personalized email engagement – particularly at scale – can be challenging.

Fortunately, Automated Workflows offer a solution, allowing healthcare companies to deliver the right messages to the appropriate individuals at the right time, based on their individual engagement with emails..

In this post, we’ll explore the concept of Automated Workflows, the considerable benefits they offer healthcare companies, and the variety of ways they can be used to increase engagement and result in greater satisfaction and better healthcare outcomes for your patients and customers.

What Are Automated Workflows?

An Automated Workflow is a sequence of actions, known as’ Steps’ in LuxSci Secure Marketing, that a Contact (i.e., a patient or customer) moves through over time, based on a series of pre-defined rules or triggers.

Each Step is programmed to automatically perform a specific function, such as sending an email or updating a Contact, when certain conditions are in place. These conditions could include:

A Contact opening a message.
A Contact clicking through on a link.
A specified amount of time having elapsed..
A data update via an API call

By evaluating conditions to initiate the appropriate Step, Automated Workflows facilitate more timely, consistent, and personalized communication with Contacts (patients and customers ). As a result, healthcare companies can effectively harness Automated Workflows to develop dynamic, personalized email engagement journeys that adapt according to your patients and customers’ needs and prior interactions.

What Are the Benefits of Automated Workflows?

Let’s look at the various advantages that Luxsci Automated Workflows offer.

Reduced Administrative Workload

Arguably, the most significant benefit of Automated Workflows is the extent to which they lower the administrative burden of email engagement campaigns for healthcare organizations.

First and foremost, Automated Workflows eliminate the need for an employee to manually send your Contacts messages. As well as the manual effort, it removes a great deal of thought from the process – as someone isn’t required to remember to send an email.

By the same token, this reduces the scope for human error, preventing the possibility of an employee neglecting to send an important message, sending it to the wrong person, or worse, accidentally exposing patient data, i.e., electronic protected health information (ePHI).

The effort that Automated Workflows reduce is typically repetitive work that staff are glad to be free of, giving them additional time to focus on tasks that provide greater value and better contribute to better patient care and/or the customer experience.

Enhanced Scalability

The time saved by employing Automated Workflows increases with the size of your Contact List and the scale of your engagement campaigns. In fact, enterprise-scale campaigns, with volumes of hundreds of thousands to millions of emails, are only feasible through the use of automation.

Similarly, Automated Workflows enable healthcare organizations to run differing, personalized email campaigns aimed at unique patient or customer segments. As well as automatically sending each message at the appropriate time, they provide tracking capabilities to determine the outcome of each message.

Increased Consistency in Communication

Because Automated Workflows remediate the risk of emails going unsent, they facilitate more timely and consistent communications with patients and customers. This makes healthcare providers, payers, and suppliers appear more reliable and consistent, building trust and greater levels of satisfaction from Contacts. More importantly, recipients are better able to track what’s happening with their healthcare and assume a more proactive role overall healthcare journey..

Finally, creating an Automated Workflow requires healthcare organizations to carefully consider how they communicate with different Contact segments. Namely, the likely journey, or communication path, different types of Contacts take, i.e., information they need to know at a particular stage in their healthcare journey, the optimal order in which information needs to be presented, etc. This allows healthcare companies to become more in-tune with their patients’ and customers’ needs, enabling them to craft more valuable email communications that boost engagement.

Personalized Healthcare Engagement

Perhaps the most significant benefit of Automated Workflows is that they enable adaptive, personalized engagement for healthcare marketing and communications campiagns. Instead of manually tracking where each Contact is in a given engagement sequence, or worse, merely having to guess, you know precisely where they are. Consequently, you’re acutely aware of their needs and the exact nature of the emails you need to send them next.

This, in turn, enables more effective Contact nurturing, i.e, strengthening your organization’s connection with each individual. When at its most effective, this may allow you to anticipate your Contacts’ needs, enabling you to send them communications, such screening or testing recommendations, educational materials, or product and service suggestions, that support their healthcare journey and enhance their quality of care.

Automated Workflow Use Cases

Automated Workflows are a powerful tool for increasing healthcare marketing and communications engagement because they can be applied to a wide range of use cases. Let’s take a look at some of the most common and impactful ways email automation can be used by healthcare companies.

New Product Announcements: keeping patients and customers in the loop on your company’s latest offerings, as well as improvements to existing products and services that are likely to be of interest, based on their data and past actions.
Personalized recommendations: suggesting products or services based on the recipient’s past purchases or engagement history.
Re-Engagement Campaigns: Automated Workflows can also be used to reconnect with Contacts with whom engagement has waned or was never completely established, sending them personalized messages to encourage specific actions or reignite interest.
New Member Onboarding: welcoming new patients or customers with a structured series of emails that introduces your services, provides technical assistance (where applicable), details subsequent steps, and explains how to get the most value from your products or services.
Appointment Reminers and Follow-Ups: sending reminders, care instructions, medication adherence advice, or details on how to book subsequent appointments, for instance, after a patient visit.
Patient Education Campaigns: taking patients through a structured curriculum on managing their medical condition or required lifestyle changes to improve their health..
Preventative Care Communications: proactively sending reminders for screenings, check-ups, vaccinations, etc., based on PHI such as a patient’s age, gender, health condition or lifestyle risk factors.

Milestone Communications: sending personalized messages to acknowledge birthdays, enrollment anniversaries, and other pertinent dates. These can also be combined with preventative care communications, to send recommendations or other advice, based on the contact’s age, for instance.
Feedback Collection: acquiring patient and customer feedback by sending follow-up surveys a set amount of time after a visit, procedure, purchase, etc.

How Automated Workflows Work in LuxSci Secure Marketing

To round off this post, let’s take a deeper look at how Automated Workflows work within LuxSci’s Secure Marketing solution. LuxSci’s Automated Workflows enhance your organization’s HIPAA compliant healthcare marketing and email campaigns by giving you complete control of:

When each email is sent
Which Contacts receive particular communications according to their behavior, needs, and other PHI-based attributes
Which engagement path or branch a Contact takes based on their email actions

Here’s a look at LuxSci’s Automated Workflows key capabilities in greater detail.

Smart Event-Based Branching and Conditions

You can branch Workflows to trigger targeted messaging based on a Contact’s attributes or certain engagement events, resulting in more relevant and effective healthcare journeys with more desirable outcomes.

User actions:
- Mailing list sign-ups
- Form completion
- Downloading a resource.
Time-based triggers:
- A set period after a visit or procedure
- A defined period of inactivity or lack of contact
- Milestones, e.g., birthdays, anniversaries.
Behavioral triggers:
- Email opens
- Clicking on links
- Visiting particular pages on a site or
- A lack of engagement with previous emails.
Transactional triggers:
- Purchasing a product or service
- Signing up for an event
- Order confirmations or shipping updates after a purchase.
API-triggered events
- Lab results or similar correspondence becoming available
- Changes to data in EHR systems, CDP platforms, or CRM systems..

Automated Segment Management

Automated Workflows can be used to dynamically add Contacts to segments based on demographics, past behavior, purchase history, and similar events. This enables more precise targeting and email personalization as they progress through specific Steps in each Workflow.

Navigation Across Steps

Automated Workflows are also capable of navigating Contacts across different Steps or completely different Workflows depending on engagement outcomes and updates to a Contact’s PHI. Better still, if a Step has already been visited, LuxSci Secure Marketing automatically prevents repetition and infinite loops.

Automate Your Healthcare Marketing and Engagement Efforts

LuxSci Secure Marketing is a HIPAA compliant healthcare marketing solution especially designed for the stringent security and regulatory requirements of the healthcare industry. Our solution enables healthcare organizations to confidently communicate with patients and customers at scale without risking compliance violations, driving increased engagement and boosting the ROI of their marketing campaigns in the process.

The latest version of LuxSci’s Secure Marketing solution with Automated Workflow functionality streamlines your company’s outreach efforts, saving considerable time, reducing human effort, and facilitating intelligent Contact management.

What’s more, LuxSci’s reporting capabilities empower you to carefully track the results of your healthcare engagement campaigns, gaining insights at every step, including:

Which Contacts received particular messages
Who engaged with email communication, and how
Precise points where drop-offs in engagement occur
The engagement achieved with each Step in the Workflow

To learn more about LuxSci’s Secure Marketing solution and how Automated Workflows boost engagement for your healthcare marketing and communications campaigns, contact us today.

How To Create a Healthcare Marketing Plan?

August 4, 2025
Erik Kangas

A healthcare marketing plan establishes strategic promotional activities, target audience identification, budget allocation, and compliance protocols to attract new patients while adhering to HIPAA privacy regulations and state advertising laws. Medical practices develop these documents to guide their promotional efforts across digital platforms, traditional media, and community outreach programs, ensuring all patient acquisition activities comply with healthcare privacy requirements and professional advertising standards.

Medical practices compete intensely for patient attention in saturated healthcare markets. Developing promotional strategies without proper planning leads to wasted resources, compliance violations, and missed opportunities to connect with patients who need specific medical services.

Target Audience in Healthcare Marketing Plan Development

Patient demographic research identifies age groups, geographic locations, insurance coverage types, and medical conditions that align with practice specialties and service offerings. Healthcare organizations analyze existing patient data to understand referral patterns, appointment scheduling preferences, and communication channel effectiveness for different population segments.

Competitor analysis reveals promotional strategies used by similar practices, pricing structures for comparable services, and market gaps that create opportunities for differentiation. This research helps practices position their services uniquely while avoiding oversaturated promotional approaches that fail to generate meaningful patient engagement.

Budget Allocation

Financial planning allocates resources across promotional channels based on expected return on investment, patient acquisition costs, and practice revenue goals. Digital advertising usually receives 40-60% of promotional budgets due to measurable results and targeted audience capabilities, while traditional media and community events receive smaller allocations.

Compliance costs including legal reviews, authorization management, and privacy training must be factored into promotional budgets to ensure all activities meet regulatory requirements. Practices that underestimate compliance expenses often discover their promotional activities violate privacy laws or professional advertising standards.

Digital Strategy to Drive Modern Patient Acquisition

Website optimization, search engine marketing, and social media presence are the core of contemporary promotional efforts outlined in every healthcare marketing plan. Practices invest in professional website design, patient portal integration, and mobile-responsive layouts to capture patients researching medical services online.

Content creation including blog posts, educational videos, and patient resources helps establish expertise while providing valuable information to potential patients. However, all content must avoid using patient information without authorization and cannot make unsubstantiated medical claims that violate advertising regulations.

Compliance Integration Protects Promotional Activities

HIPAA authorization procedures, business associate agreements with promotional vendors, and state advertising law compliance must be woven throughout every aspect of promotional planning. Healthcare marketing plan development includes legal review processes, privacy impact assessments, and staff training protocols to prevent violations.

Documentation requirements for promotional activities include consent forms, vendor contracts, and approval workflows that demonstrate compliance with healthcare privacy laws. Practices without proper documentation face significant penalties when regulatory investigations uncover promotional activities that violate patient privacy protections.

Community Outreach Builds Local Patient Relationships

Health fairs, educational seminars, and community partnerships create opportunities for practices to connect with potential patients through face-to-face interactions. These activities require planning to ensure patient privacy protection while maximizing promotional impact through relationship building and trust development.

Referral programs with other healthcare providers, local businesses, and community organizations can generate new patient leads when structured appropriately. Any financial incentives for referrals must comply with healthcare fraud and abuse laws to avoid legal complications.

Performance Measurement Guides Strategy Optimization

Patient acquisition metrics, appointment conversion rates, and promotional channel effectiveness data help practices evaluate their promotional success and adjust strategies accordingly. Healthcare marketing plan implementation includes tracking systems for website traffic, phone inquiries, and new patient appointments generated by different promotional activities.

Return on investment calculations compare promotional spending with revenue generated from new patients to determine which activities provide the best financial results. Practices use this data to reallocate budgets toward high-performing promotional channels while eliminating ineffective strategies.

Implementation Timeline

Monthly promotional calendars coordinate campaign launches, content publication schedules, and community event participation to maximize promotional impact while avoiding resource conflicts. Healthcare marketing plan execution requires detailed project management to ensure all activities launch on schedule and within budget constraints. Seasonal considerations including flu shot campaigns, wellness check promotions, and holiday health messaging opportunities require advance planning to capitalize on increased patient interest during specific time periods. Practices that plan these campaigns well in advance may achieve better results than those that react to opportunities without preparation.

What Does the HIPAA Marketing Rule Require?

August 1, 2025
Erik Kangas

The HIPAA marketing rule prohibits healthcare organizations from using protected health information for promotional communications without written patient authorization, defining promotional activities as communications that encourage patients to purchase products or services with financial benefit to the sender. Organizations can send treatment-related communications, appointment reminders, and health plan benefit descriptions without authorization, but any communication promoting third-party products, paid services, or revenue-generating activities requires explicit patient consent through properly executed authorization forms.

Healthcare providers regularly find themselves struggling with acceptable patient education and prohibited promotional activities. A simple newsletter about diabetes management becomes problematic when it includes advertisements for glucose monitors or pharmaceutical products that generate revenue for the practice.

The HIPAA Marketing Rule Authorization Framework

Patient authorization documents must contain sixteen specific elements including detailed descriptions of information to be disclosed, identification of recipients, expiration dates, and explanations of revocation rights. These forms cannot be combined with other consent documents and must use plain language that patients can easily understand. Healthcare organizations face penalties when authorization forms lack required elements or contain overly broad permission language.

Patients retain the right to revoke authorization at any time, forcing organizations to immediately cease all promotional activities involving that individual’s information. Organizations cannot condition treatment, payment, enrollment, or benefits eligibility on patients providing authorization for promotional purposes, creating clear separation between healthcare services and commercial activities.

Treatment Communications Bypass Marketing Restrictions

Healthcare organizations can discuss treatment alternatives, medication options, and care coordination services without obtaining separate authorization because these communications serve legitimate healthcare purposes rather than commercial interests. Appointment scheduling, test result notifications, and prescription refill reminders fall under treatment or healthcare operations exemptions from marketing regulations.

Face-to-face communications between providers and patients about treatment options is unrestricted, even when providers receive financial benefits from recommended treatments or services. Written materials distributed during these encounters may trigger authorization requirements if they promote specific products or services beyond the immediate treatment relationship.

Financial Incentive Distinctions Shape HIPAA Marketing Rule Compliance

Communications become subject to the HIPAA marketing rule when healthcare organizations receive financial remuneration from third parties for promoting their products or services. Pharmaceutical company payments for promoting medications, medical device manufacturer incentives, or referral fees from specialty services transform otherwise acceptable communications into restricted promotional activities.

Organizations must examine their financial relationships carefully to determine when communications cross from permissible healthcare operations into restricted promotional territory. Even nominal payments or gifts from third parties can trigger marketing authorization requirements for communications that mention or promote those parties’ products or services.

Business Associate Relationships Complicate Marketing Activities

Vendors creating promotional materials, managing patient outreach campaigns, or analyzing treatment data for commercial purposes need business associate agreements before accessing PHI. These relationships are difficult if the promotional vendors also provide healthcare services or when healthcare organizations share revenue from marketing activities with their business partners.

Organizations must negotiate appropriate contractual protections and ensure vendors understand their obligations under the HIPAA marketing rule before beginning any collaborative promotional activities. Liability for vendor violations remains with the covered entity, making careful partner selection and monitoring essential for maintaining compliance.

Digital Platforms & Modern Marketing Compliance Challenges

Social media advertising, email campaigns, and online retargeting involve sharing patient information with technology platforms that lack appropriate privacy protections. Healthcare organizations cannot upload patient contact lists, demographic details, or treatment information to advertising platforms without proper authorization and business associate agreements covering those platforms.

Website analytics, social media pixels, and advertising tracking technologies may inadvertently capture and transmit PHI to third-party platforms without appropriate protections. Organizations need controls to prevent accidental information sharing while still enabling effective digital marketing activities within compliance boundaries.

Enforcement Penalties Reflect Serious Violation Consequences

Recent Office for Civil Rights enforcement actions have resulted in multi-million dollar settlements for organizations that used patient information in marketing materials without authorization or shared PHI with advertising vendors without appropriate agreements. These cases highlight increasing federal scrutiny of healthcare promotional activities and willingness to impose substantial financial penalties.

Violations may stem from seemingly innocent activities like patient newsletters, social media posts, or website testimonials that inadvertently disclosed PHI without proper authorization. Organizations discover that good intentions cannot shield them from penalties when their marketing activities violate patient privacy protections under the HIPAA marketing rule.

Compliance Programs Minimize Violation Risks

Healthcare organizations benefit from establishing clear review processes for all promotional materials and patient communications before distribution. Designated privacy personnel can evaluate whether proposed communications require authorization, involve business associate relationships, or create other compliance risks under marketing regulations.

Staff training helps employees recognize the difference between permissible healthcare communications and restricted marketing activities. Education updates keep pace with new promotional channels, emerging technology platforms, and evolving interpretations of the rule’s requirements within changing healthcare and advertising landscapes.

LuxSci Expands Executive Team to Scale Enterprise Growth and Operations

September 17, 2024
LuxSci

LuxSci, a leading provider of secure, HIPAA-compliant communications software, today announced new executive appointments as part of its strategy to drive future growth and further expansion into the enterprise market. Experienced B2B software executives Robert Sullebarger and Geneviève du Lac have joined the company as Head of Sales and Head of Finance, respectively – reporting to recently appointed CEO Mark Leonard. In addition, David Hillman has joined the company as Director of Engineering, reporting to Erik Kangas, Chief Technology Officer.

“LuxSci has proven its capabilities with some of the largest, most forward-looking companies in healthcare, including patient engagement platform, EHR systems, and payment providers, as well as healthcare retail and in-home care providers,” said Leonard. “Bob, Geneviève and David all bring deep leadership experience combined with a willingness to be hands-on in helping us optimize our operations and execute quickly for our customers and partners.”

Proven Sales Leader and Trusted Advisor

Bob’s career has focused on enterprise software sales and customer acquisition across both established and emerging technologies, including security & compliance, conversational AI and virtual assistant platforms, machine learning, and telecom & networking. Bob brings LuxSci more than two decades of experience in sales, marketing, and product management roles, serving as both a trusted business advisor and a technology expert for customers and partners. Most recently, he led the sales teams for AI solution providers ModuleQ and Interactions LLC, where he helped the company grow from $10 million to more than $100 million in annual revenue. He has also held leadership positions at contact center analytics provider CallMiner, and data security provider Vericept Corporation.

“LuxSci is the gold standard for HIPAA-compliant email and secure healthcare communications with a leadership position in the market,” said Sullebarger. “With healthcare portal adoption maxing out, we have a real opportunity to improve patient engagement and outcomes by opening up the email, SMS and marketing channels to bring more people into today’s healthcare conversation.”

Experienced CFO and Finance Leader

Geneviève joins LuxSci with more than 15 years of experience in CFO and Finance leadership roles. This includes building world-class Finance teams and organizations in the cybersecurity, consumer, and services industries at companies including Cypress Security, Astro Gaming and Wine Country Connect. Throughout her career Geneviève has established a proven track record of success in Finance leadership for ‘scale-up’ businesses, with focus on SaaS companies. Geneviève also brings LuxSci deep experience in implementing systems & processes aimed at building operational scalability, which will be a key part of her responsibilities at the company.

“I’m excited to be joining LuxSci as we build it into a world-class organization,” said Du Lac. “The company has achieved tremendous success to date, and we’re positioned better than ever to keep growing – and to help transform the healthcare industry with secure communications.”

Full Stack Software Architect and Data Scientist

David joins LuxSci with more than 20 years of experience across the entire spectrum of application development, data analysis and automated systems. This includes architect, engineer, developer, and consultant roles at innovative companies, such as Kapital Trading, Gogo, Monster, Livetext, and AT&T Bell Labs. David specializes in designing and building data-intensive applications that analyze large datasets and extract intelligence, as well as developing tools to empower users to interact with those resources. At LuxSci, David will play a key role in the future development of LuxSci technology, helping guide the company’s product direction and roadmap moving forward.

“I’m looking forward to collaborating with the outstanding team already in place at LuxSci and continuing to enhance our products to make our customers’ healthcare communications and operations both smoother and safer,” said Hillman.

In other recent news, LuxSci continues to innovate in secure healthcare communications, recently rolling out new email reporting capabilities and achieving best-in-class performance for email security.

LuxSci has been at the forefront of HIPAA-compliant communications since its inception, offering a full suite of products for secure email, marketing, text and forms. Today, LuxSci is used by nearly 2,000 customers for HIPAA-compliant communications across the healthcare industry, including athenaHealth, 1800 Contacts, Delta Dental, Lucerna Health, Hinge Health, and Rotech Healthcare.

If you’d like to learn more about how LuxSci can help you with secure healthcare communications, reach out to us today for a meeting or demo!

How To Create a Healthcare Marketing Plan?

August 4, 2025
Erik Kangas

What is a Secure Email Gateway?

October 24, 2023
LuxSci

As threats to email security are increasing, organizations are looking for ways to enhance their security and reduce risk. One option is a secure email gateway. In this article, we review what secure email gateways are and how they can be used to secure sensitive data as it flows into and out of your accounts.

Protect Your Accounts With A Secure Email Gateway

Secure email gateways are an excellent way to strengthen the security of your email accounts without a costly switch to a new email provider. They layer on top of your existing email accounts to encrypt messages, scan for threats, and even capture messages for archival or backup purposes. They can also hide the sender’s IP address because messages are routed through another email infrastructure before delivery to the recipient. If you are concerned about increasing risks to sensitive data, secure email gateways offer a simple and effective way to enhance your email security.

How Do Secure Email Gateways Work?

When using a secure email gateway, your messages are routed to a separate server before being sent or received. When sending an outbound message with LuxSci’s Secure Connector, it is routed through our SecureLine encryption before being securely delivered to the recipient. A copy of the message may also be sent to an independent email archive to help meet compliance requirements for message retention.

For incoming messages, the gateway can employ email filtering technology to quarantine suspicious messages. These technologies can scan incoming messages and prevent spammers and scammers from reaching employee inboxes and wreaking havoc. Just like with outbound email sending, the gateway can also capture a copy of inbound messages and retain them in an independent message archive.

The exact features of a secure email gateway will vary from vendor to vendor, but these represent some of the core functions that these tools provide. Simply put, a secure email gateway protects both incoming and outgoing messages to ensure that sensitive data is guarded from threats.

Why Choose a Secure Gateway?

There are two main reasons to implement a secure email gateway: the security and compliance benefits and their ease of use. Let’s look at each.

Compliance and Security Benefits

Many companies, like healthcare organizations, must comply with regulations for protecting patient or customer data. Many organizations grapple with the best way to secure potentially sensitive communications without interfering with or slowing down critical business workflows. Because secure email gateways layer on top of existing email accounts, they offer a speedy way to bring your organization into compliance with data security and retention guidelines.

As email continues to be an important channel for essential business communications, all organizations can benefit from protecting their employee accounts and reducing their risk and liability.

Easy to Administer and Use

Another benefit of using a secure email gateway is that your organization does not need to switch your primary email provider to enhance its security. Changing to a more secure email provider can be extremely challenging, especially if you have a lot of users with a lot of data that needs to be migrated to a new system. Add on the training time, and some organizations will find that switching email providers is a significant burden on the organization.

Installing a secure email gateway is very easy for account administrators and often does not require additional training or implementation for email users. Employees can continue to use their regular Microsoft or Google email accounts and do not need to take additional steps to learn an entirely new email program. With 73% of breaches in the healthcare industry caused by human factors, implementing tools that don’t rely on employee decision-making is essential.

Learn More About LuxSci’s Secure Connector

LuxSci’s Secure Connector is unlike other secure email gateways in that it encrypts every email automatically to reduce the risk of breaches caused by human errors. LuxSci provides the flexibility to opt-in to more secure methods of encryption for highly sensitive messages. Email filtering and archival tools are also available to reduce risk and improve resilience in the case of a cyber incident. Contact our sales team to learn more about our email security tools.

What are the Three Levels of Patient Engagement?

October 25, 2024
Erik Kangas

Patient engagement occurs across three levels: consultation, involvement, and partnership. These progressive levels describe how patients interact with healthcare systems and participate in their care decisions. Healthcare organizations design communication strategies, technologies, and care models to move patients through these engagement levels, ultimately improving health outcomes and patient satisfaction while reducing costs.

The Consultation Level of Patient Engagement

The consultation level marks the starting point for patient engagement in most healthcare settings. At this level, patients receive information about their health conditions and treatment options from healthcare providers. Communication flows primarily from provider to patient, with limited opportunity for patient input. Patients ask basic questions about their care but generally follow provider recommendations without substantial discussion. Healthcare organizations implement patient portals and educational materials to support information sharing at this level. Appointment reminders and basic health tracking tools help patients follow prescribed care plans. The consultation level of patient engagement meets minimum standards for informed consent but doesn’t fully utilize patient knowledge and capabilities in the care process.

The Involvement Level of Patient Engagement

As patients move to the involvement level of engagement, they become more active participants in their healthcare decisions. Providers seek patient input about preferences and priorities when developing treatment plans. Patients regularly track health metrics and report symptoms between appointments using digital tools and paper logs. Care teams establish two-way communication channels through secure messaging and follow-up calls. Patients receive education about their conditions that enables them to make more informed choices about treatment options. Healthcare organizations measure involvement through metrics like patient portal usage, appointment attendance, and treatment plan adherence. The involvement level of patient engagement creates more personalized care experiences while improving clinical outcomes through better treatment adherence and earlier problem identification.

The Partnership Level of Patient Engagement

The partnership level is the most advanced form of patient engagement, where patients function as true collaborators with their healthcare team. Patients and providers make decisions jointly, with providers offering medical expertise while respecting patient values and preferences. Care planning becomes a shared activity with mutually established goals and responsibilities. Patients access and contribute to their health records, adding context to clinical data. Healthcare organizations include patient advisors in program development and quality improvement initiatives. Technology platforms support robust data sharing between patients and providers, integrating patient-generated health data with clinical systems. The partnership level of patient engagement transforms the traditional healthcare hierarchy into a collaborative relationship that recognizes patients’ expertise about their own health experiences.

Factors Influencing Patient Engagement Levels

Several factors determine which level of patient engagement an individual can achieve at any given time. Health literacy affects patients’ ability to understand medical information and participate in decision-making. Cultural backgrounds influence expectations about patient-provider relationships and appropriate levels of involvement. Digital access and technology skills impact how effectively patients can use engagement tools. Chronic conditions often motivate higher engagement levels as patients develop expertise managing long-term health issues. Healthcare system design either facilitates or creates barriers to engagement through appointment scheduling, communication policies, and information accessibility. Provider communication styles and willingness to share decision-making power affect how comfortable patients feel increasing their engagement level.

Measuring Patient Engagement Across Levels

Healthcare organizations use various metrics to assess patient engagement at each level. Survey tools like the Patient Activation Measure (PAM) quantify patients’ knowledge, skills, and confidence in managing their health. Digital platform analytics track how patients interact with portals, mobile apps, and communication tools. Care plan adherence rates indicate how actively patients follow recommended treatments and lifestyle changes. Patient-reported outcome measures capture health improvements resulting from engagement activities. Healthcare utilization patterns often shift as engagement levels increase, with fewer emergency visits and more appropriate preventive care. These measurement approaches help organizations track progress in their patient engagement initiatives and identify areas needing improvement.

Strategies for Advancing Patient Engagement

Healthcare organizations implement targeted strategies to help patients advance through engagement levels. Communication training for clinical staff develops skills in shared decision-making and patient activation. Technology selection focuses on tools accessible to diverse patient populations with varying digital literacy. Care team redesign creates roles dedicated to patient education and self-management support. Process improvements reduce barriers to engagement by simplifying scheduling, communication, and information access. Population segmentation allows for personalised engagement approaches based on patient characteristics and needs. Incentive structures for both providers and patients reward activities that increase engagement levels. Through these strategic approaches, healthcare organizations create environments where patients can progress toward more active participation in their healthcare.

Benefits of Advancing Patient Engagement Levels

Moving patients to higher engagement levels creates substantial benefits for individuals and healthcare systems. Patients experience improved health outcomes as they become more knowledgeable and confident managing their conditions. Clinical quality measures improve through better treatment adherence and more effective care planning. Healthcare costs often decrease with reductions in unnecessary services and better chronic disease management. Patient satisfaction increases when care aligns more closely with individual preferences and priorities. Provider satisfaction improves through more productive interactions and shared responsibility for health outcomes. Healthcare organizations that successfully advance patient engagement across all three levels position themselves for success in value-based payment models that reward better outcomes and patient experiences.