Informed Delivery & HIPAA
Informed Delivery is modernizing direct mail. The USPS has hit a double, if not a home run, with this service offering. Informed Delivery enables daily morning emails to consumers with images of the mail in their mailbox appended with images and links from the marketers who have sent them. There is a strong case to be made for the marketing potential of this service for mailers looking to engage with their patients, consumers, clients and donors. At EPI, we are helping our clients replicate their printed mailer call to action in digital form to give their target audience maximum opportunity to engage.
For our Healthcare clients, we are also helping them navigate this new potential communication channel when their mailer may contain, or be considered in and of itself PHI. We have asked the USPS for their help and wanted to share the below communication from the USPS Privacy and Records Management Office:
“Although we cannot provide you with a legal opinion on HIPAA’s application to Informed Delivery, we can hopefully provide a few helpful insights. The Postal Service provides Informed Delivery to its customers, as a service. Mailers, do not provide Informed Delivery, but instead put their items in the mail stream and those customers with the Informed Delivery service will receive the letter from the mailer and an advanced email with mail images from the Postal Service. The mail images are the mail cover. The inside of a mailpiece is not provided. Informed Delivery does not change the nature of the mail process. We have attached the Informed Delivery Federal Register Notice and comment responses, so that you can have a better understanding of the service.
Moreover, HIPAA does not apply to the Postal Service. As previously discussed, the Postal Service and not the mailer, will be emailing Informed Delivery customers the images.
As for whether, as a mailer, your company can leverage hotlinks, we suggest that you consult a lawyer familiar with HIPAA for an opinion. However, we can say that the mailer is not sending the email or the link. The email always comes from the Postal Service.”
Whether you wish to entirely avoid the image of your mail piece from being electronically included in the USPS Informed Delivery email, or you wish to present compelling accompanying images, calls to action and links to offers and engagement forms, EPI has a solution for you!
