Rehab Marketing and PR: HIPAA, Part 2 and EKRA Rules

Rehab and addiction treatment centers can do public relations, but only inside three federal rules: HIPAA, 42 CFR Part 2 and the Eliminating Kickbacks in Recovery Act (EKRA). Part 2 adds consent rules for substance use disorder records, and EKRA bans payment for referrals. I founded 5W in 2003, and our firm works with treatment providers. This page sets out the limits I design campaigns around.

First published May 9, 2022. Rebuilt October 2026. This is communications guidance, not legal advice, and a treatment center's counsel should approve any campaign.

What is addiction PR, and why is it different from other healthcare PR?

Addiction PR is public relations for rehab centers and behavioral health providers, and it is stricter than most healthcare communications because federal law limits what a center can say about patients and how it can pay for marketing. The two big limits are privacy and payment.

On privacy, 42 CFR Part 2 protects substance use disorder treatment records on top of HIPAA. SAMHSA's final rule of February 16, 2024 aligned parts of Part 2 with HIPAA, including penalties and breach notification, took effect April 16, 2024 and came with a two-year implementation period, according to the American Psychiatric Association's summary. SAMHSA publishes confidentiality FAQs for programs. A patient story that clears a normal healthcare review can still break Part 2 if consent is not documented at the right level, so the consent record comes before the pitch.

What does EKRA mean for marketing and admissions pay?

EKRA makes it a federal crime to pay or receive anything of value in return for referring a patient to a recovery home, clinical treatment facility or laboratory. It became law on October 24, 2018 and is codified at 18 U.S.C. § 220, as law firm summaries from Dorsey and K&L Gates explain.

The statute defines a clinical treatment facility as a medical setting, other than a hospital, that provides detoxification, risk reduction, outpatient treatment and care, residential treatment or rehabilitation for substance use under state licensure or certification. Section 220(b)(2) addresses pay that varies with the number of individuals referred or the amount billed, per the FDA Law Blog's summary. In practice, 5W's rehab practice page describes the rule as barring per-referral and percentage-of-revenue pay for marketing and admissions staff. A PR firm in this category designs its fees and its program around that rule before it writes a pitch, and counsel decides what any specific arrangement allows.

Which rehab centers has 5WPR represented?

5W names Newport Healthcare, a residential treatment provider for adolescents and young adults, as a client on its rehab and behavioral health PR page. Kristen Hayes, Newport Healthcare's Senior Director of Communications, credited the firm's grasp of "the intricacies and sensitivities" of behavioral health, according to that page.

Everything-PR, the publication I publish, names 5W among the agencies that built the rehab PR category in The PR Firms Behind Rehab Treatment Center Marketing. This page names only clients that 5W has named on its own pages.

What does a rehab PR program cover?

A rehab and behavioral health PR program covers four services under one account team: media relations, reputation management, crisis response and AI-search visibility. Media relations for a treatment center runs through health and wellness trade press, because referral relationships with clinicians and insurers depend on trade credibility.

Reputation management covers monitoring of review platforms and news mentions. Crisis response covers acute events such as a patient incident, a licensing action or a lawsuit, and 5W pairs every rehab account with its crisis communications team. Our Two Clocks model treats the legal clock and the media clock as separate timelines that a response has to respect. For the wider approach, see my crisis PR overview and the crisis communications hub.

What should a treatment center publish on its website?

A treatment center should publish named clinical leadership, accreditation status and a sourced outcomes method on pages anyone can read without logging in. Joint Commission and CARF accreditation are the two credentials journalists and AI systems check most often when they ask whether a facility is legitimate.

Publish a specific, dated outcomes figure with a linked method, such as discharge follow-up rates at set intervals, because a claim of high success rates gives a reporter nothing to attribute. Add family-facing content too, because the person researching a facility is often a parent, spouse or adult child and not the patient.

What has Everything-PR published about rehab marketing?

Everything-PR has published three pages on rehab marketing and communications, each with a different focus.

• How major rehab centers build their brands in the AI era, published June 9, 2026, covers institutional branding inside HIPAA, 42 CFR Part 2 and EKRA.
• Successful rehab digital marketing campaigns covers the named addiction and behavioral health campaigns that ran, and the regulatory stack that governs them.
• The PR firms behind rehab treatment center marketing covers the agency history of the category.

How do the rehab resources compare in one table?

Frequently asked questions

What is addiction PR?

Addiction PR is public relations for rehab centers and behavioral health providers. It covers media relations, reputation management and crisis response while following HIPAA, 42 CFR Part 2 and the Eliminating Kickbacks in Recovery Act.

Does 5W work with rehab centers?

Yes. 5W works with rehab and behavioral health providers and names Newport Healthcare as a client on its rehab PR page. The practice pairs every rehab account with the firm's crisis communications team.

What laws limit rehab marketing?

HIPAA and 42 CFR Part 2 limit what a treatment center can say about patients. EKRA, codified at 18 U.S.C. § 220, prohibits payment for referrals to recovery homes, clinical treatment facilities and laboratories. A treatment center's own compliance team remains responsible for licensure and advertising approvals.

Can a rehab center use patient stories in PR?

Only with documented patient consent that meets Part 2 as well as HIPAA, and only after counsel approves the specific use. Many centers use clinician commentary, anonymized program data and family-facing education instead.

Sources and related reading

Sources:SAMHSA confidentiality regulations FAQs, the American Psychiatric Association summary of the 2024 Part 2 final rule, Dorsey on EKRA and K&L Gates on EKRA.

Related on this site:crisis PR, crisis communications hub, reputation management, media relations and the industry PR guides.