What started as a conference Q&A has grown into a full-scale solution for our industry. In this episode, Jenny introduces We Are, HIPAA Smart—the first and only compliance training platform built specifically for healthcare marketers. Born from years of podcasting, speaking, and consulting on the evolving regulatory landscape, the platform was created to finally offer practical, tactical training built for marketers instead of clinicians.
Jenny walks through what’s included in the launch, from 101-level modules on HIPAA and general compliance to a more advanced technical course for teams deep in implementation work, and shares how the platform can help teams meet compliance expectations while getting back to what they love—marketing.
Resources Mentioned:
Connect with Jenny:
Email: jenny@hedyandhopp.com
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jennybristow/
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Jenny: Hi friends! Welcome to today’s episode of We Are, Marketing Happy, a healthcare marketing podcast. My name is Jenny Bristow and I’m the host and I am the CEO at Hedy & Hopp, a full service, fully healthcare marketing agency. I am so excited to be here with you today to officially announce the launch of our compliance training platform for healthcare marketers called We Are, HIPAA Smart.
Anyone who knows the background of Hedy & Hopp knows that we have done lots of training on healthcare marketing through the lens of compliance. So ever since the bulletin was released in 2022, we’ve put up podcast episodes featuring lawyers in the space that specialize in healthcare, helping us understand the bulletin language, or understand how state laws or FTC regulations may be impacting our work.
We have done lots of podcast episodes with our own internal team members who are industry leaders on this topic, Mark Brandes and Lindsey Brown. And we’ve spoken at conferences across the country about this topic. While last year at one of the conferences, during the Q&A at the end, an audience member raised their hand and stood up and said, you know, Jenny, this is great, but now I have to go back and talk with the rest of my marketing team and help them understand what all we need to be paying attention to.
Are there any online resources that I could point us to for us to all get training on what’s going on, and how we can build a compliant team and process? And I swear, if you were in that crowd, you probably saw a light bulb go off over my head because I immediately thought, no, but there should be. We are so passionate about helping marketers learn all of these complex details.
Work with your legal and compliance teams to get aligned on what your approach for your organization will be. Implement the changes you need to implement and then get back to doing the marketing that you love. That really makes a difference on patients’ lives by helping them access care. And so for us, this felt like a really utilitarian solution to help make sure that everyone in the entire marketing team within your organization has standardized training to help them understand what’s the regulatory landscape within healthcare marketing, what do we need to do to comply and do it through the lens with examples that are relevant to them?
We are a business associate to a lot of healthcare providers and payors. We recommend that they have all vendors sign BAAs because of accidental exposure to PHI or, in sometimes a purposeful handling of a PHI trying to do the marketing tactics and campaigns.
And so as a result, every single member employee at Hedy & Hopp goes through healthcare BAA training within the first two weeks of starting employment with our organization. The frustrating thing is, all of the training modules available online are more focused for clinical users. People that are actually in the doctor’s offices or in the hospital seeing patients or prospective patients face to face.
None of them. We have not found a single platform that actually talks about examples and applications through the lens of digital marketing tactics, tools, and processes. So we made one. This platform is available to all healthcare marketers, whether you work at a provider, payor, if you work at an agency, anybody who is working with healthcare marketing, it is available to you.
It does not matter if you have 20 years of experience in healthcare or if you are brand new. Maybe you’re coming from another industry. These modules, the curriculum within them will help you understand what rules, laws, and regulations you need to be aware of based off of the geography that you serve. And then, how to modify your tools and processes in order to be compliant.
There are a variety of training modules that we are launching with. We’re launching with two. The first one is compliance training for healthcare marketers. This is a 101 class that walks through big picture all of the variables that marketers need to be aware of if you’re going to do work in healt care. So we cover at the 10,000ft level the basics of HIPAA, FTC, state laws, and we introduce class action lawsuits and how that can impact your work.
That’s really an intro 101 class. We then have a module that 100% focused on HIPAA compliance training for marketers. This course goes over the foundations of HIPAA and takes an in-depth view about how the shifting privacy guidelines impact the work that we do. So we go into modules such as paid media, website analytics, CRM, email marketing, websites, and much more.
In a couple of weeks, we’re going to be launching our first advanced module. This is Advanced Technical Healthcare Marketing. So this goes into the how-to detail. So if you’re a member on a team or if there is a member on your team and they’re responsible for actually implementing marketing tactics, this is the module for you. So this course will actually go and talk about advanced analytics techniques and tactics.
It will talk about settings in Google Analytics 4, a lot of technical details about sGTM, and CDPs. We’re not hiding anything here. There is no oh Hedy & Hopp does implementation, so we’re not going to talk about things in depth. None of that. We’re not keeping anything a secret. All of the technical details that we have chosen to include in the curriculum are there.
We truly want to empower marketers to be able to do the technical components of their work. Two other fun modules that we’re going to be launching later in the year is a compliance training for lawyers, the technology 101. So all of you have worked with a lawyer who really knows their stuff when it comes to FTC and state laws and HIPAA.
But sometimes there’s a gap between what they know and then how technology actually works. So this course is going to be a course that actually helps them understand what is a pixel, what’s a floodlight, how does it work? How and when does a form actually pass data through and where does it go? So it really is going to help them understand what marketers are actually dealing with through the lens of technical details so they can be better stewards of their organization and really get into the weeds with you.
And then the last one is a BAA 101. So for all of you vendors out there that are being asked to sign a BAA, my goodness, you better know what you are signing before you sign it. There are serious, legal and financial ramifications for signing a business associates agreement. So you really need to understand all of the details, what it means, and how to get comfortable and understand, your responsibilities by signing one.
We have a lot of other resources and courses coming later in the year. So these are just the ones that are, on the tail end of development that will be ready to launch very soon. A couple of big-picture Q&A. Are discounts for multiple users, and can one person create multiple seats? We’ve been getting this question a lot from our beta users.
And the answer is yes. So if there’s one person within your organization that you want to have, manage and create seats for team members so your entire team can go through training, super easy peasy. To do that on the site and you get a phase discount based off the number of seats and training modules that you purchase.
And then if you have any questions, give us a holler. We’re here. We’re very proud to launch and put this platform out into the market. All of this education was forged through blood, sweat, and tears for actual client work that we have been doing over the last few years. We have done dozens and dozens well, actually, let me take that back.
Hundreds and hundreds of privacy audits and implementations for providers of all sizes, everything from a single location provider or a critical access hospital, all the way up to a statewide or multi-state provider system or payor group. We’ve done it. And so we have taken all of that knowledge and education and really put it into this platform for others to benefit from.
Our point of view is that we want to get all of this behind us. We want to help shape the industry and create processes that allow us to get back to doing marketing and allow healthcare marketers to start thinking again about some of those more advanced techniques like personalization and or integrating AI into our workflows. But we got to get this privacy stuff behind us.
So hopefully you will find these training courses helpful. One final thing is, except for the 101 course, the overview course, all of these courses come with certificates of completion. So again, if you want to ensure that every single one of your team members has a foundational, amount of training before beginning to work for your organization, or if you are an employee and you want to really showcase to either your current employer or to future employers in healthcare that you know your stuff when it comes to compliance within healthcare marketing, it’s a great thing to be able to put on LinkedIn, to be able to showcase, your knowledge in this space.
So that is it for today’s episode. Again, I am super, super jazzed. You can go and check it out at We Are, HIPAA smart. And again, HIPAA is two As not to Ps friends two As. We Are, HIPAA Smart, and ping me with questions or comments. I’d love to hear what everybody thinks once you get in there, but it’s something, again, that we’re just super proud of and excited to put it out there to help marketers, you know, get to where we need to be to move forward as an industry.
So thank you so much for tuning in today. Please, like this podcast, podcast. Share the episode with somebody on your team or within your network that you think would benefit, and subscribe to our channel to receive updates on future episodes. Have a great rest of your day. Cheers!
