Digital advertising can be one of the most effective ways for healthcare companies to reach prospective patients, generate appointments, introduce new services, and grow their organizations.
But healthcare advertising comes with an important consideration that businesses in many other industries do not face: protecting sensitive health information.
Healthcare organizations may use Google Ads, Meta Ads, analytics platforms, conversion tracking, remarketing, and other marketing technologies to improve advertising performance. However, the way these technologies collect, transmit, and use data deserves careful attention—particularly when the organization is subject to the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA).
A campaign can appear perfectly normal from a marketing perspective while its underlying tracking configuration creates privacy concerns.
Understanding that distinction is essential for healthcare marketers.
What Is HIPAA?
HIPAA is a federal law that, among other things, establishes standards for protecting certain individually identifiable health information.
The HIPAA Privacy Rule applies to covered entities—including certain healthcare providers, health plans, and healthcare clearinghouses—as well as business associates performing certain functions or services involving protected health information (PHI) on behalf of covered entities.
Not every healthcare or wellness business is necessarily a HIPAA-covered entity. However, healthcare organizations should determine which privacy requirements apply to their specific operations before implementing advertising and analytics technologies.
For digital advertisers, one of the most important questions is:
What information is being collected about website visitors, and where is that information being sent?
That question should be addressed before sophisticated tracking or audience strategies are implemented.
Why HIPAA Matters in Digital Advertising
Modern advertising relies heavily on data.
A typical digital marketing setup might include:
- Google Ads conversion tracking
- Google Analytics
- Google Tag Manager
- Meta Pixel
- Call tracking
- Online appointment scheduling
- CRM integrations
- Remarketing technologies
- Landing-page analytics
- Form tracking
- Server-side integrations
These tools can provide valuable information about how prospective patients discover and interact with a healthcare organization.
But they can also transmit information to third parties.
The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ Office for Civil Rights (OCR) has specifically addressed the use of online tracking technologies by HIPAA-regulated entities. OCR describes tracking technologies as scripts or code on websites or mobile applications that collect information about users and their interactions.
The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and HHS have also warned healthcare organizations about privacy and security risks associated with technologies such as tracking pixels and analytics tools.
This does not mean healthcare companies cannot advertise online or measure advertising performance.
It means tracking should be implemented deliberately rather than simply installing every marketing tag available.
PHI Is More Than a Patient’s Medical Record
When people hear “protected health information,” they often think of medical records, diagnoses, prescriptions, or laboratory results.
Digital environments can be more complicated.
Information generated through websites, patient portals, forms, applications, appointment systems, and other digital interactions may require careful evaluation depending on what the information contains, the context in which it is collected, and the organization’s relationship with the individual.
For example, a healthcare organization should carefully evaluate whether advertising technologies could receive information associated with activities such as:
Appointment requests: A person schedules or requests an appointment for a particular healthcare service.
Patient portal activity: An authenticated patient accesses pages related to treatment, appointments, prescriptions, test results, or other healthcare information.
Form submissions: A prospective or existing patient enters information about symptoms, conditions, medications, insurance, or the reason for seeking treatment.
Conversion URLs: A website URL or page structure contains information that could reveal something sensitive about a person’s interaction with healthcare services.
The appropriate analysis depends on the circumstances. Healthcare companies should therefore avoid assuming that data is harmless simply because it does not contain a patient’s name.
The Tracking Pixel Problem
One of the biggest challenges in healthcare advertising is the widespread use of third-party tracking technologies.
A tracking pixel or tag can collect information when someone visits a webpage or completes an action. Depending on the technology and configuration, information may then be transmitted to an advertising or analytics provider.
For an ordinary ecommerce company, tracking that someone viewed a pair of shoes and later made a purchase may present a relatively straightforward advertising use case.
Healthcare is different.
Imagine someone visits a treatment-specific page, submits an appointment request, and reaches a confirmation page. If third-party technologies are installed throughout that journey, the organization needs to understand exactly what those technologies receive.
OCR has issued guidance addressing online tracking technologies, although an important portion of its guidance concerning certain unauthenticated public webpages was vacated by a federal court in 2024. Healthcare organizations should therefore evaluate current guidance and applicable law rather than relying on simplified claims that every healthcare webpage visit automatically constitutes PHI.
The broader lesson remains important:
Know what your tracking technology collects before deploying it.
HIPAA Does Not Mean You Cannot Use Google Ads or Meta Ads
A common misconception is that HIPAA prevents healthcare companies from advertising through major digital platforms.
That is too broad.
Healthcare organizations can run digital advertising campaigns. The more important issue is how data flows between the healthcare organization and advertising platforms.
For example, a Search campaign could send users searching for a service to an informational landing page. The advertising itself may not require the healthcare organization to disclose patient information to the advertising platform.
Problems can arise when tracking, audience creation, remarketing, form integrations, or conversion measurement transmit information that should not be disclosed.
This is why healthcare advertising strategy should separate two questions:
Can we run this advertisement?
and
Can we collect and send this particular data to the advertising platform?
Those are not necessarily the same question.
Be Particularly Careful With Remarketing
Remarketing is common in digital advertising.
Someone visits a website but doesn’t convert. Advertising technology places that person into an audience, allowing the company to advertise to them again later.
For healthcare organizations, this requires additional scrutiny.
A user’s interaction with certain healthcare content can reveal information or permit sensitive inferences. Building advertising audiences around those interactions may therefore introduce privacy, platform-policy, and regulatory concerns.
Healthcare advertisers should evaluate remarketing strategies based on factors including:
- What page or action qualifies someone for the audience
- What information is transmitted to the advertising provider
- Whether the information constitutes PHI
- Whether appropriate permissions or agreements exist
- The advertising platform’s healthcare and sensitive-interest policies
- Applicable federal and state privacy requirements
Simply because an advertising platform technically allows an audience to be created does not necessarily mean the organization should use it.
Conversion Tracking Requires a Different Mindset in Healthcare
Good advertising requires measurement.
Without conversion tracking, it becomes difficult to determine which campaigns, keywords, advertisements, and landing pages generate meaningful results.
Healthcare companies should not abandon measurement. Instead, they should design a measurement strategy around privacy from the beginning.
Rather than automatically tracking every interaction and sending every available parameter to advertising platforms, identify the information genuinely required to make advertising decisions.
For example, marketers may want to understand:
Campaign → Click → Landing Page → Conversion
They do not necessarily need:
Campaign → Click → Patient identity → Medical condition → Appointment details → Conversion
The second data flow introduces significantly more sensitive information than is required to answer the basic advertising question.
Privacy-conscious measurement is therefore not necessarily about collecting no data.
It is about collecting and sharing the appropriate data for the intended purpose.
HIPAA’s Minimum Necessary Principle
The HIPAA Privacy Rule includes a “minimum necessary” standard for many uses, disclosures, and requests involving PHI. Covered entities generally must make reasonable efforts to limit PHI to the minimum necessary to accomplish the intended purpose when the standard applies.
That principle also provides a useful mindset for digital marketing.
Before transmitting information to another system, ask:
Do we actually need this information to accomplish our advertising objective?
If the answer is no, consider whether it should be collected or transmitted at all.
More data is not always better—especially in healthcare.
Business Associate Agreements Matter
Healthcare organizations sometimes assume that hiring a vendor automatically makes sharing information with that company permissible.
It does not.
When a vendor creates, receives, maintains, or transmits PHI while performing certain services on behalf of a covered entity, the relationship may require the vendor to act as a HIPAA business associate and enter into an appropriate Business Associate Agreement (BAA).
Healthcare organizations should determine whether vendors involved in analytics, call tracking, CRM systems, appointment scheduling, hosting, data management, or other marketing-related functions will handle PHI and whether the necessary contractual and technical safeguards are available.
A vendor describing its product as “HIPAA compliant” should not end the evaluation.
Organizations should understand the specific product, configuration, data flow, and contractual relationship involved.
HIPAA’s Rules Around Marketing Communications
HIPAA also contains specific provisions concerning the use and disclosure of PHI for marketing.
HHS generally defines marketing under the Privacy Rule as a communication about a product or service that encourages recipients to purchase or use it, while providing several important exceptions for treatment and certain healthcare-related communications.
In many circumstances where PHI is used or disclosed for marketing, patient authorization is required.
There are exceptions and distinctions, however. For example, certain communications concerning treatment, care coordination, or a covered entity’s own health-related services may fall outside HIPAA’s definition of marketing.
Healthcare organizations planning campaigns based on existing patient information should therefore obtain appropriate legal or compliance guidance before using patient data to build marketing lists or advertising audiences.
HIPAA Is Not the Only Privacy Consideration
Being outside HIPAA’s scope does not necessarily mean health information can be freely collected or shared.
The FTC has taken enforcement actions involving companies’ handling of sensitive health information, and its Health Breach Notification Rule can apply to certain organizations that are not covered by HIPAA.
State privacy laws may impose additional obligations as well.
Healthcare marketers should therefore avoid treating “HIPAA compliant” as synonymous with “compliant with every applicable privacy requirement.”
The appropriate framework depends on the company’s business model, location, data practices, technology, and relationship with patients or consumers.
A Privacy-Conscious Healthcare Advertising Framework
Healthcare companies can build effective advertising programs while taking privacy seriously.
A strong process typically begins with mapping the entire advertising and analytics ecosystem.
Identify the platforms installed on the website, what information each technology collects, where the information goes, and why it is needed.
Next, review conversion actions individually. Determine whether an advertising platform genuinely needs the information associated with each action.
Evaluate landing pages, forms, appointment systems, call tracking, analytics tools, pixels, CRM integrations, and audience configurations—not just the ads themselves.
Organizations should also establish internal processes for approving new marketing technologies. Installing a new tracking script should not be treated as an insignificant website update when sensitive health information could potentially be involved.
Finally, marketing, IT, security, compliance, and legal teams should work together when necessary.
HIPAA compliance should not be delegated entirely to the advertising department.
Questions Healthcare Companies Should Ask Before Launching a Campaign
Before launching or substantially changing a healthcare advertising program, ask:
- Are we a HIPAA covered entity or business associate?
- What advertising and analytics technologies are installed on our website or app?
- What information does each technology collect?
- Where is that information transmitted?
- Could any transmitted information constitute PHI or other sensitive health information?
- Are we sending information that isn’t necessary for advertising measurement?
- Do relevant vendors require Business Associate Agreements?
- Have our forms and appointment-booking processes been reviewed?
- Are remarketing audiences appropriate for this healthcare use case?
- Do our advertising practices comply with platform policies as well as applicable federal and state laws?
- Have legal, compliance, privacy, or security professionals reviewed higher-risk implementations?
- Do we have a process for periodically auditing our advertising technology?
These questions can uncover privacy risks before they become larger problems.
Compliance and Performance Should Work Together
Healthcare companies do not have to choose between responsible data practices and effective advertising.
In fact, privacy-conscious advertising can encourage better marketing discipline.
It forces marketers to identify the conversions that actually matter, eliminate unnecessary data collection, improve attribution architecture, and focus campaigns on business outcomes instead of collecting data simply because technology makes it possible.
The objective should be to build a system in which advertising performance and patient privacy are considered together from the beginning.
Final Thoughts
HIPAA adds complexity to healthcare digital advertising, but it does not eliminate the opportunity.
Healthcare companies can still use paid search, social advertising, landing pages, analytics, conversion measurement, and other digital strategies to reach prospective patients and grow.
The key is understanding the data behind those campaigns.
Know what is collected.
Know where it goes.
Know why it is needed.
And when PHI or other sensitive health information could be involved, make privacy and compliance part of the advertising strategy—not an afterthought.
At The Health Ad, we help healthcare companies develop digital advertising strategies built around measurable growth, thoughtful tracking, and the unique requirements of healthcare marketing.
Ready to improve your healthcare advertising strategy?
Schedule a consultation with The Health Ad to discuss your goals, current campaigns, tracking setup, and opportunities for growth.
Disclaimer: This article is provided for general informational purposes only and does not constitute legal advice. HIPAA and other privacy requirements depend on the specific facts and circumstances of an organization and its data practices. Healthcare companies should consult qualified legal, privacy, or compliance professionals regarding their specific obligations.
