Pulmonology Coding Alert

Question: We would like to send a quarterly email newsletter to our patients, which includes tips on healthy ways to navigate allergy season, how to clean CPAP machines, and any other topics that we think would be relevant to our patient base. Would we be violating the privacy or security rules if we sent these messages as a mass email? Must we send the e-newsletters to each patient individually?

Codify Subscriber

Answer: You don’t have to send the e-mails individually, but you also can’t disclose each patient’s name and email address. Instead, you should either use an email newsletter service that keeps the subscriber list hidden or use your email application’s “blind carbon copy” (BCC) feature to mask patients’ email addresses. That way, you are not revealing any patient identities to your other patients. If these solutions don’t work for you, you can always house the newsletter directly on your website and let patients know it’s updated once a month and to visit your site monthly to see it.