HIPAA and Social Media: Essential Guidelines for Every Brand

The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) has protected patient privacy since 1996. It ensures medical records and other protected health information (PHI) are handled securely, with safeguards for confidentiality, data integrity and breach notification.  

Not surprisingly, a social media HIPAA violation makes for dramatic and expensive repercussions.  

HIPAA and social media are a challenging combination, given the rise of data sprawl and misinformation. Just look at the numbers. The Office for Civil Rights (OCR) of the United States Department of Health and Human Services (HSS) saw a 39% spike in HIPAA complaints in 2021 compared to 2017, so you can only imagine the number now.  

If brands relax their grip on HIPAA regulations, the risk of data breaches escalates. Last year's record-breaking 725 hacking attacks impacted the PHI of 124 million patients.  

Considering this, in this guide, we’ll be providing a roadmap to making your social media presence HIPAA-compliant. We'll also explore the worst HIPAA violations, equip you with essential guidelines and outline the golden rules for healthcare brands to follow on social media.  

Understanding HIPAA and social media compliance

HIPAA safeguards sensitive PHI (Protected Health Information), which includes medical history, current diagnosis, treatment plans and even photos from healthcare facilities. 

Given social media’s democratized format, PHI can be easily shared or discovered in ways that weren’t intended. Imagine publishing a verbal testimonial or sharing user-generated content on a patient's successful treatment. When this information is combined with the provider's location and the patient's social circle, it could be a full-fledged HIPAA violation. Sharing appointment times or specific symptoms or treatments that could be unique to a patient also counts as a HIPAA violation.  

Outside of breaching patient confidentiality and losing their trust, there are very real monetary and legal consequences to violating these guidelines. For instance, in 2023, the OCR fined New York-based St. Joseph’s Medical Center $80,000 for disclosing details of three patients without their consent to a reporter, incurring reputational damage. So it's prudent for healthcare companies to be extremely careful about how they process and protect patient information.

Read more: Future of social media in 2025 

Benefits of HIPAA compliance in social media

HIPAA compliance may seem like an added layer of red tape. But it does help keep your patients' information and brand reputation safe. You don’t want to get tangled in a web of fines. Keeping things confidential safeguards your health facility against litigation and builds customer confidence.   Here are a few benefits of HIPAA compliance in social media:  

• Builds loyalty and trust: Adherence to HIPAA guidelines is synonymous with transparency and even shows your commitment to users’ privacy. The result? Stronger patient relationships, better patient engagement and off-the-charts user ratings. So it goes without saying that it goes a long way in building customer loyalty.  
• Protects brand reputation: A single social media misstep exposing PHI can tarnish your reputation forever. It can take away years of effort you have put into positioning your brand as a responsible stakeholder in the healthcare ecosystem.  
• Reduces legal risks: HIPAA violation fines can be costly, ranging from $15,000 to $1.3 million. Brands have doled out $4 million in fines in 2023 alone, not counting the legal counsel fees!  
• Enhances social engagement: Patients who trust your commitment to privacy are more likely to interact with your content. Their advocacy often translates to a positive online community with organic growth and improved customer experiences.  

Important HIPAA rules for social media and beyond

Brand compliance on social media is a win-win situation for both businesses and patients. Here are the most critical HIPAA rules brands must follow:   

• To protect patient confidentiality, HIPAA has created 18 specific identifiers that cannot be disclosed on social media without written consent from the patient. These include name, ZIP code, geographic location, account numbers, age, date, year, IP address and even social security numbers.  
• Besides your brand, HIPAA covers your associated entities, like third-party vendors, independent contractors and clearing houses. It also covers pharmacists and other medical professionals you might have hired. So get them to sign a business associate agreement beforehand to cover your bases.  
• HIPAA requires brands to notify patients and regulators within 60 days of a breach of unsecured PHI. Failure to notify the OCR within the period will attract hefty penalties.   
• Monitor your social media conversations. Respond promptly and professionally to patient inquiries or concerns raised on social media. However, avoid disclosing any PHI in your responses. Ask patients to delete any information they have shared with your customer representatives while making an appointment over unsecured and public social media channels.  
• Implement the minimum necessary rule. Evaluate your brand’s and associated entities’ practices and have safeguards in place to limit unnecessary access to or disclosure of PHI. 

Examples of HIPAA violations on social media and tips to overcome them

Social media is a powerful marketing tool for healthcare brands, but patient privacy trumps everything else. Here are some of the common HIPAA violations to watch out for on social media, along with tips to overcome them: 

1. Sharing patient stories without consent

Social media can be great for sharing positive patient experiences or educating your audience on rare diseases. However, if you include any identifying information, that’s a HIPAA violation. Look at the case of a North Carolina dentist. He was fined $50,000 for disclosing patient information on a Google Business page.  

The best way to go about this is to use generic testimonials or anonymize details by removing names, locations and specific dates. Dr. Cyriac Abby Philips, aka TheLiverDoc, does that very well:    

Source   

2. Lacking security measures for information theft

Physicians and even healthcare marketers working on bottom-of-the-funnel (BoFU) content, such as case studies and customer testimonials, carry patient data everywhere — on laptops, tablets and phones. But lost or stolen data can be a nightmare. Take the case of Premera Blue Cross. In 2020, the organization was penalized $6.85 million after a breach through an undetected phishing mail that stayed in its system for nine months. 

Encryption, strong passwords and multi-factor authentication are essential to safeguard your devices from compromise. This ensures your team members aren't tricked into sharing patient data from their work devices.  

Also, for customer service security, implement clear social media policies for staff. This should include training on identifying PHI, understanding authorization requirements and maintaining patient privacy on all online platforms.  Consequences of HIPAA non-compliance on social media  Violating HIPAA on social media can be a significant challenge for brands. Here's why:  

• Severe financial penalties: HIPAA violations can result in hefty fines imposed by the HHS. These penalties can cripple a healthcare organization's finances. 
• Loss of patient trust: Sharing PHI on social media is a direct breach of patient trust. Once broken, this trust is incredibly difficult to regain; your patients will seek care elsewhere. 
• Legal repercussions: HIPAA violations can lead to lawsuits from affected patients. These legal battles can be costly and time-consuming, further damaging the organization's reputation.  

How to implement HIPAA guidelines for your brand

It is important to protect patients’ privacy while engaging with them. Here's a roadmap to implementing HIPAA guidelines and building a compliant social media strategy: 

1. Monitor patient interactions

If you're not careful, booking appointments or offering customer service via social media can lead to HIPAA violations. But it's not just you — patients may accidentally share their PHI in comments or messages on your social media channels. 

Here's what you can do: 

• Include automated disclaimers on your social media profiles and in direct message interactions. Keep them prominent. Every time a potential customer starts interacting with you, remind them to refrain from sharing any personal health information. 
• If you're short-staffed, use tools like Sprinklr’s Conversational AI platform to deploy multilingual chatbots so as to create "smart responses." These replies are pre-programmed based on the context of different scenarios. 
  

  Source  

2. Hire a HIPAA security officer

Healthcare brands have an unlimited data pipeline of customer information and are constantly at risk of data security breaches. So hire a fractional privacy officer or a HIPAA security officer who can help you build processes from scratch and ensure operational resilience.  

A HIPAA security officer will:  

• Help you run annual employee training programs and periodic risk audits.  
• Maintain HIPAA documentation and coordinate with legal teams to understand exposure. 
• Notify authorities of breaches and investigate attacks, as well as the reasons and consequences of ePHI compromise.  
• Develop security protocols and customer-facing business continuity plans. 
• Monitor your social media presence to ensure adherence to HIPAA compliance policies and take corrective action if necessary.  

 🔎 Implement social listening to monitor online conversations around your brand  
 
Get a comprehensive view of how your brand is being discussed online without having to jump hoops for each social media channel. To do this, you can use Sprinklr’s social listening tool, which:  

📊 Lets you access billions of customer conversations across 30+ social and digital channels.  

🧐 Provides a single-pane view to detect and monitor all your brand mentions in one place.   

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3. Train your workforce

Train your customer service representatives to identify keywords and scenarios that could indicate potential HIPAA violations in direct messages or comments. Customize training sessions based on the type of workforce. For example, learning modules for your hospital’s housekeeping staff will differ from those of your social media manager. Ensure all modules cover essential topics like: 

• What constitutes protected health information (PHI)? 
• How can the minimum necessary rule be applied using only the minimum patient data required? 
• What are patients’ rights regarding their medical information? 
• What are the significant consequences of unauthorized PHI disclosure? 
• What are the proper procedures for responding to PHI exposures and data breaches? 

4. De-identify PHIs  

Flag PHI every time it's mentioned in your social feed or user-generated content. This can include names, locations, biometrics, medical records, device and vehicle identifiers, URLs and full-face photographs.  

While creating social posts, focus on generalities. Instead of specific patient experiences, focus on broader topics like disease prevention, healthy habits or general treatment options.  

Learn More: Comprehensive Guide on Social Media Content Creation 

5. Run annual HIPAA assessments  

Regular HIPAA audits can help you build the operational resilience of your customer-facing infrastructure: 

• Build a cross-functional team for your risk assessment. Include representatives from IT, compliance, legal and clinical departments. 
• Safeguard your PHI inventory by creating a security checklist for each step — reviewing the IT asset management system, digitizing physical PHIs and using APIs — to track PHI movement.  
• Assign risk ratings based on the likelihood of occurrence and its potential impact on patient privacy (high, medium or low). Based on the results, divert resources for training, staffing, encryption, 2FA or building chatbots to automatically de-identify PHI.  

Read More: The Ultimate Guide to Enterprise Risk Management  

Final thoughts 

Breaking HIPAA compliance can tarnish the reputation of established healthcare organizations, create a trust deficit with customers and even result in bans. But HIPAA compliance on social media isn’t a one-person task. Enforcing adherence requires strong relationships with your legal and security teams.   

Gaining awareness should be the first step in building a culture of privacy and compliance, followed by implementing the necessary checks and balances. Once you have an operational workflow in place, automate compliance through a centralized platform.   

Sprinklr safeguards your social media activities from HIPAA violations through: 

• AI-powered smart compliance: Smart compliance for images, videos and other multi-media collaterals automatically flags PHI or other potentially sensitive disclosures.  
• Role-based access control: This type of access control ensures that only authorized users can view, manage and edit sensitive information.  
• Built-in approval workflows: You can review social media content for accidental PHI disclosures before they’re live.  
• Social listening: This helps you in proactively monitoring brand mentions and in mitigating potential HIPAA-related crises early on.  
• Smart inbox: You can use the smart inbox feature to flag messages that contain PHI and automatically send appropriate responses. 

Permission controls, automated alerts and social monitoring across 30+ channels? Sprinklr Social has it all. Want to know how it can help you achieve social media success without violating patient privacy?