With updated HHS guidance rocking the healthcare marketing landscape, our analytics operations team conducted an audit to see what marketing tools folks are still using in 2024.
Our team analyzed 118 websites from payers and providers nationwide to see how people have responded to HIPAA guidelines. In this week’s podcast, Jenny provides a snapshot of the current state of healthcare marketing tools:
Overall
- 11.9% of healthcare websites have removed every tag and marketing pixel from their website
Google Analytics
- 70% still have GA4 installed on their website
- 45% still have UA installed on their website
- 25% are using GA4 exclusively, without UA
- 0.9% are using UA exclusively
Media Tracking and Tags
- Over 55% are still using media or conversion tracking tags
Forms
- 6.8% are using a form that isn’t HIPAA compliant
- 6.8% are using Gravity Forms, but may not be using the HIPAA-compliant version
Privacy-Forward Solutions
- 1.7% have Freshpaint on their website
- 2.5% use Piwik Pro
- 2.5% use sGTM
While these numbers illustrate that many providers and payers have taken the first steps toward privacy-forward, compliant analytics and tracking solutions, there is still so much room for improvement. As we begin to see more enforcements related to HIPAA compliance,
HHS’s restructuring to focus on enforcement: https://www.hhs.gov/about/news/2023/02/27/hhs-announces-new-divisions-within-office-civil-rights-better-address-growing-need-enforcement-recent-years.html
Connect with Jenny:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/jennybristow/
Jenny: [00:00:00] Hi friends. Welcome to today’s episode of “We Are, Marketing Happy,” a healthcare marketing podcast. I am your host, Jenny Bristow. I’m the CEO and founder at Hedy and Hopp. We are a full service, fully healthcare marketing agency that works with payers and providers across the country. I am very excited to join you today to be able to share some interesting audit findings.
So we have really robust marketing analytics and operations in-house here at Hedy and Hopp. And occasionally I’d like to just ask my team to run some industry audits, to be able to understand what’s going on, who’s using what tools, how have people shifted as far as platform utilization and loyalties, etc.
And so over the last couple of weeks, I’ve asked our analytics operations team to dig in. So they did an audit of about 120 [00:01:00] websites, it was 118 websites. And it was folks that went to SHSMD and HCIC last year. So we went in, we looked at all of the different provider and payer groups that attended. It was a really nice sampling of folks across the country.
So we had everything from really small, single location children’s hospital, critical access hospital systems, all the way up to large regional providers that are very well funded. So it’s a really nice cross segment snapshot, we believe. And I had our operations team go in. Our analytics operations team go in and really conduct an audit to understand what marketing tools are folks still using?
How have people responded to all of this updated guidance from health and human services related to the new HIPAA guidelines saying we no longer can collect IP address or device ID, et cetera. I’ve spoken [00:02:00] about this so, so many times. There’s tons of podcasts. If you don’t really know what I’m talking about, go back and look at the HIPAA and FTC 101 recorded in March of last year.
It’s a really great foundation of like why folks have to change the platforms they’re using. So we’ve seen people shifting platforms over the last year. We have helped a lot of folks shift over. The solution that Hedy and Hopp offers is a server side Google Tag Manager implementation. You can still use Google Analytics, but that server side implementation on a server with Google where they will sign a business associates agreement, it strips out. We set it to identify all of the variables that are flagged as no longer secure.
Or. You know, potentially a problem because of the new guidance strip all of it out. So once it gets to Google Analytics 4 it’s safe. So that’s the tool stack that we recommend, but let’s dig into the numbers. Let’s see what folks have done. So the first really [00:03:00] fun number is that 11.86, almost 12 percent, of these organizations have removed every single marketing analytics tracking tag from their website and they still have nothing on there.
So almost 12 percent of people in the industry and healthcare marketing are flying blind. They have not been able to choose a new solution. They have not implemented changes to their analytics stack, they are simply flying blind and they do not know why people are converting, what campaigns are working, et cetera, 12%.
That number was shocking to me. 70% still have Google Analytics 4 on their website. So 70 percent of folks in the healthcare marketing world provider and payer are still going with the old standby Google Analytics 4 again, here at Hedy & Hopp, we’re okay with that. We put in a nice little filter to make sure no bad data gets to Google Analytics 4, but that’s a pretty high number.
In my opinion, of folks that are still using it because only, 2.5 [00:04:00] percent are using server side Google Tag Manager. So there’s a huge gap there of folks that are still using the old standby Google Analytics, but have not implemented any sort of changes to make sure it’s no longer collecting information that it shouldn’t be accessing.
Out of that 70%, about 45 percent still had Universal Analytics tags on their website. We saw this a lot whenever folks are rolling out GA4, they wanted to put UA tags on there so they could compare the data side by side, the way that Google Analytics 4 measures sessions is foundationally different from Universal Analytics.
So a lot of folks wanted a while to like run them simultaneously. It’s stopped tracking for a lot of folks. So I’m surprised we’re still up at 45%. It’s going to begin stopping for everybody. I believe in July, they keep pushing it back. But most people it’s already stopped gathering and collecting information.
So that tells me that a lot of people just aren’t staying up with the tags that are put on their website and aren’t [00:05:00] regularly cleaning them. 0.85 percent about 1%. There’s one poor soul, one poor soul that only has universal analytics tags on their website. Nothing else. It is unclear if that website is still getting any data pulled in, or if they are one of the websites that UA has shut down for. I will be sending that person a one on one email after this, letting them know that they have a problem.
Because I do not know if they know that they have a problem, so I will be reaching out to them. Again, 1 percent has that. And then 55 percent still have media or ad tracking tags on their website. 55%. That is mind boggling to me with all of the conversations that have been happening in the industry that 55 percent still have conversion tracking tags from media platforms on their sites.
It’s crazy. 6.78 percent are using a form that is not HIPAA compliant. So almost 7%. Are collecting information on a form that’s not HIPAA compliant, [00:06:00] another 6.78%, so another almost 7 percent are using Gravity Form and Gravity Form has a version that can be compliant. They’ll sign a BAA with you. It’s an additional small fee you have to pay.
We can’t tell if they’re using the HIPAA-compliant version one or not from the outset. But again, another, almost 7 percent are using Gravity Forms. 1. 69 percent have Freshpaint. On their website. We love fresh paint. We love the guys over at Freshpaint. The guys and gals are doing a phenomenal job.
They have a really cool healthcare privacy tool that they’ve implemented. It’s pretty sophisticated. It’s more for organizations that have a CRM are really wanting to leverage additional deeper data about their users, but we love what they’re doing over there. So it looks like 1.7 percent of folks have transitioned over to Freshpaint out of out of this cross segment we reviewed.
2.54% so about 2.5 percent are using Piwik Pro. So again, Piwik Pro is another great [00:07:00] option. It kind of has an interface similar to Universal Analytics, what we all were used to with the old Google Analytics interface. They also will sign a BAA with their Pro version. So that’s a really easy way to foundationally move over implementations pretty smooth.
You’ll lose a lot of the dashboards you’ve built. If you run Google Analytics 4 before, so you have to kind of make that business decision at the, if it makes sense to do that or server side implementation like we offer here at Hedy and Hopp. But again, really interesting. So with this, I think the biggest takeaway is that if you as your organization have done something to become HIPAA- compliant, you’re way ahead of the curve.
Between 50 and you know, 70, 66 percent of people haven’t done anything yet. You know, they still have non compliant forms on their website. 50 percent have Or 55 have media tracking and conversion pixels on their website. So a lot of folks haven’t moved yet. And I know that for a lot of folks, it’s because of the [00:08:00] time it takes to be able to wrangle legal and it within their organizations and align on what the best platform is moving forward, but if you are one of those people in that group, I strongly recommend you begin moving forward. We’re continuing to see more and more enforcements related to using media-based conversion pixels and collection of these new variables that are not PHI compliant or that are HIPAA compliant.
If you have any questions, contact us. Even if we aren’t the right solution for you, we’re happy to point you in the direction of other ones that are industry leading and really doing right when it comes to healthcare marketers. So again, I hope this was insightful. I’m going to share all of these statistics and percentages in the show notes.
So if you want to go back and kind of see how it all breaks down please do so. And if you have any questions about this or want to dig in deeper to our methodology or the cross section we evaluated, just give me a holler. Until next time, have a great rest of your day. Please give us a review, give us some stars and we’ll continue [00:09:00] producing this podcast content for you.
Have a great rest of your day. We will see you soon.
