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The Top 4 HIPAA Email Disclaimer Examples

Brought to you by Exclaimer

HIPAA, otherwise known as the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, applies to all healthcare providers, healthcare clearing houses, and organizations that transmit health data electronically in the United States.

Essentially, if you have access to personal healthcare data and send emails to medical patients, you MUST use an appropriate HIPAA email disclaimer.

The financial penalties are severe if you do not include a compliant HIPAA email disclaimer on all messages. In fact, the maximum fine can be over $1.5 million for each violation and even involve up to ten years of prison time.

Now, a HIPAA email disclaimer is only meant to inform patients. It does not make a company fully compliant with HIPAA law. However, HIPAA does require that your disclaimer tells the recipient the following:

The email they are receiving is not 100% secure.

The content placed within the message is confidential.

They should pass the email on to the relevant person if they are not the correct recipient.

There are consequences for misusing personal information.

Below are our top 4 HIPAA email disclaimer examples used by healthcare organizations across the U.S. to aid in their HIPAA compliance.

WARNING: CONFIDENTIALITY NOTICE – The information enclosed with this transmission are the private, confidential property of the sender, and the material is privileged communication intended solely for the individual indicated. If you are not the intended recipient, you are notified that any review, disclosure, copying, distribution, or the taking of any other action relevant to the contents of this transmission are strictly prohibited. If you have received this transmission in error, please notify us immediately at (xxx) xxx-xxxx or [email protected]

The information contained in this transmission may contain privileged and confidential information, including patient information protected by federal and state privacy laws. It is intended only for the use of the person(s) named above. If you are not the intended recipient, you are hereby notified that any review, dissemination, distribution, or duplication of this communication is strictly prohibited. If you are not the intended recipient, please contact the sender by reply email and destroy all copies of the original message.

Please keep in mind that communications via email over the internet are not secure. Although it is unlikely, there is a possibility that information you include in an email can be intercepted and read by other parties besides the person to whom it is addressed. Please do not include personal identifying information such as your birth date, or personal medical information in any emails you send to us. No one can diagnose your condition from email or other written communications, and communication via our website cannot replace the relationship you have with a physician or another healthcare practitioner.

Regulations require encrypted messaging systems for confidential communications. Since our e-mail/text communications are not encrypted, it is the policy of [PRACTICE NAME] not to use e-mail/text for sharing confidential information. We are sorry if this causes inconvenience for you in receiving information from us. Please call us at (xxx)xxx-xxxx. Further information about our practice can be found on our website at www.xxxxxxx.com.

Implementing a HIPAA email disclaimer

So, you now realize what you need to include in a HIPAA email disclaimer. But how are you going to apply this across your whole organization? What’s to stop an employee from removing any important text or changing the font?

Sure, you could use the native functionality of Office 365 (now Microsoft 365), G Suite (now Google Workspace), or Microsoft Exchange. However, you’ll end up cluttering a recipient’s inbox with lots of disclaimer text. This ensures they won’t read the important information contained within your email.

To overcome these limitations, you should use Exclaimer email signature management solutions. You can then ensure everyone has an appropriate HIPAA email disclaimer that they cannot modify. Even better, you’ll get peace of mind from managing everything centrally within one easy-to-use console.