Web Tracker Manager: Streamlining HIPAA Compliance for Healthcare Marketers

Web trackers are the heart of HIPAA compliance for healthcare marketers. Manage them well, and you’re in compliance with nothing to worry about. But, if you mismanage one single tracker, you could find yourself faced with a HIPAA violation.

At Freshpaint, we’re focused on giving healthcare marketers complete control over their web trackers. We’ve already introduced the industry’s first Healthcare Privacy Platform with built-in Web Tracker Monitoring to give marketers an understanding of their web trackers.

Now, we’re improving on that with Web Tracker Manager.

What is Web Tracker Manager?

Web Tracker Manager is built for privacy-first healthcare organizations to monitor, assess, annotate, resolve, and manage the web trackers that exist on their websites. Users can do all of that from one easy-to-use dashboard built into Freshpaint’s Healthcare Privacy Platform. 

Monitor: Stay up to date with all the web trackers on your website

Web Tracker Manager gives you a complete picture of web trackers on your website by crawling every page, waiting for trackers to load, intercepting the tracker’s actions, and then logging it for users to see.

Each logged tracker can be viewed in the Healthcare Privacy Platform, allowing users to see which pages the tracker loaded on. Additionally, a weekly email report is sent to users, providing information about newly installed trackers.

Assess: Understand the HIPAA risk associated with each web tracker

Web Tracker Manager provides context and descriptions about each tracker and assigns a level of HIPAA compliance risk. This information is crucial to help healthcare teams assess their organizational risk level for each tracker. 

For example, if Web Tracker Manager logs the Google Analytics web tracker, it tags the tracker as “High Risk” because Google Analytics is at the root of many lawsuits and fines related to HIPAA compliance. 

Annotate: Write notes about each web tracker to help with decision-making and historical reference

When evaluating each web tracker, it's helpful to make notes about its owner, the tool it operates, or any other key details you find important.

Notes help you keep track of your thinking, or who you need to ask for more information about the web tracker. 

Resolve: Make decisions about how to handle each web tracker

Once you’ve assessed the risk level of each tracker, you can now decide what to do with each one. Through Web Tracker Manager you can choose between 5 different resolution types:

• Resolution 1: Replace with Freshpaint – Freshpaint integrates with advertising platforms, analytics tools, and other services. If you replace the third-party tracking technology with Freshpaint, you can continue using your tools while maintaining HIPAA compliance.
• Resolution 2: Sign a BAA – Many vendors will sign a Business Associate Agreement with covered entities. If you’re able to get a BAA with the company that developed the web tracker, then those trackers no longer present a HIPAA risk on your site.
• Resolution 3: Mark as Safe – If your team determines the web tracker does not pose a risk, you can mark it as such and Web Tracker Manager will move the tracker to a “low risk” status.
• Resolution 4: Uninstall the tracker – If the web tracker is deemed as high risk and it isn’t important for the functionality of your website, or for your marketing, you can mark the tracker for removal from your website. This is helpful for marketing teams that rely on IT to get the tracker off their site.
• Resolution 5: Owned by my org – Your site may be retrieving resources from or sending information to additional first-party domains. There is no risk of violating HIPAA if PHI is shared with these domains since they are owned by your organization.

After you’ve chosen how to resolve each web tracker, you’re one step closer to full HIPAA compliance.

Manage: Upload your BAAs for each tracker for easy reference

If you’ve signed a BAA with a vendor behind a web tracker, you can upload it to Web Tracker Manager for easy reference.

That way, if there’s ever a question about the compliance of a tracker, you’ll have an easy way to find the BAA for the vendor.

Web Tracker Manager: your source of truth

Together, all of these components help to make Web Tracker Manager a source of truth for web tracker compliance and efficiency in healthcare marketing.

Ready to find all the web trackers on your website? Get a free scan here, or click here for more information.

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