If your company deals with healthcare, you are aware of HIPAA’s rules on email compliance. HIPAA compliance is required for each patient you treat in order to safeguard their protected health information (PHI). However, you must first have patients in order to protect patient data. A marketing strategy can help with that, specially when you are dealing with the healthcare email list.
Do marketing emails have to be HIPAA compliant?
According to the Privacy Rule, “marketing” is the act of “communicating about a product or service in a way that encourages recipients to buy or use the product or service.” In general, if the communication is “marketing,” it can only take place if the covered entity first has “permission” from the person.
So, yes, HIPAA requires that you store and transmit PHI safely.
What guidelines should be followed?
Make sure your email marketing service is HIPAA compliant
To send direct encrypted emails to patients, your healthcare company should already have a HIPAA compliant email provider in place. Emails used for marketing purposes must adhere to the same encryption standards. However, because they are not HIPAA compliant, you cannot send emails containing PHI using the common marketing tools. According to research, none of the most popular marketing suppliers will sign a BAA and permit you to send emails containing PHI using their platform at the same time.
Make sure your patients authorize receiving email communications, including marketing emails
Three things must be done when patients join your email list:
- Provide written notice to your patients informing them that emails pertaining to marketing efforts will be sent to them.
- Tell them again why they chose to receive your emails (i.e. news from your practice, refill reminders, promotional gifts or discount coupons, care coordination, etc.)
- Include a no-hassle unsubscribe option
- Healthcare firms must adhere to additional rules for marketing communications in addition to making sure your email marketing service is HIPAA compliant.
Only use an off-the-shelf marketing service
If you select a traditional marketing vendor, be careful to send only the most generic email blasts devoid of PHI. Imagine sending an email blast to a list of 200 or 2,000 patients only to discover that you forgot to include a specific piece of patient information before you clicked the send button. That is a HIPAA violation, bam! A HIPAA breach carries a yearly maximum fine of $1.5 million. For each instance of wrongdoing, standard fines for a single offense vary from $100 to $50,000.
Use verified marketing software to send emails
It makes perfect sense to send PHI in an email marketing campaign for a number of reasons. especially if it emphasises the patient journey and raises patient participation in their care. Personalization may help your business expand. When compared to generic blast emails, personalised communications can perform up to three times better. You can get a 5 to 8 times greater return on investment for your marketing effort and boost revenues by over 10% if you customise your email to a single patient. Use the most effective email marketing device available to medical professionals. It allows you to send emails that contain PHI, to categorise recipients based on any trait of your choosing, and to send targeted emails with contents that are specific to a given patient.
