Healthcare - WordPress Maintenance
Healthcare sites carry risks that general-purpose WordPress sites don't. When something breaks, patients can't book appointments, access their portal, or reach your practice. When something is breached, the exposure isn't just a security incident. It's a potential HIPAA violation.
Overview
Most WordPress security incidents start with an unpatched plugin. On a healthcare site with HIPAA-compliant contact forms or patient intake elements, a vulnerability in any plugin that touches those components creates direct PHI exposure, a reportable breach event under HIPAA.
If your site goes down when patients are trying to book morning appointments or check telehealth access, you lose those bookings. Patients don't call the main office to ask why the site isn't loading. They look for another provider.
HIPAA requires covered entities and business associates to maintain backups of PHI and be able to restore it after a system failure. A standard backup to an unencrypted location doesn't satisfy that requirement. Most hosting plans don't provide this level of backup infrastructure by default.
New WCAG enforcement deadlines, updated HIPAA guidance on tracking technologies, and changing state privacy law all affect what your site needs to do. A site that launched compliant in 2022 may have gaps today.
What's included
Updates
Every update is tested in a staging environment before touching production, so a bad plugin update doesn't take your patient-facing site offline.
Backups
Daily backups with encrypted off-site storage on HIPAA-compliant infrastructure. Backup integrity is verified regularly and restoration procedures are documented.
Reliability
We monitor your site continuously and respond to downtime alerts immediately. We usually know before a patient emails to say they can't book.
Security
Firewall configuration, login security, file integrity monitoring, and regular malware scans. Healthcare sites are targeted specifically because of the value of patient data.
Performance
Booking pages and patient portal links that load slowly cost you appointments. We monitor Core Web Vitals and page load times on the patient-facing pages where speed directly affects conversion.
Compliance
We flag changes to third-party tools or plugins that could introduce compliance issues, and note WCAG-related changes that might affect your accessibility posture.
One outdated plugin with a known vulnerability is all it takes. If that plugin handles form submissions or connects to your EHR, you're looking at a breach investigation and HIPAA notification obligations. The cost of a breach far exceeds the cost of ongoing maintenance.
Patients who can't book online during their window of intent don't always call. They search again. If they find a competitor with a working booking experience, you've lost that patient, and trust erodes over time.
WCAG enforcement deadlines are real, and HIPAA guidance on tracking technologies keeps evolving. A site that launched compliant three years ago may not be compliant today. Without ongoing attention, you find out about the gap during an audit or a lawsuit, not before.
Plans
Three tiers on top of managed hosting. Care plans are scoped on the intake call so you're not paying for coverage that doesn't match your site.
Core Care
Single-location practices & smaller specialty groups
Active Care
Multi-location practices & EHR-integrated organizations
Enterprise Care
Health systems, hospital networks & digital health companies
Managed hosting starts at $99/mo.
Onboarding
Most healthcare practices and health systems don't realize their site is exposed until something goes wrong. We start every new maintenance relationship with a site audit covering update history, hosting configuration, backup status, plugin inventory, and a compliance review of forms and analytics.
That audit surfaces gaps left by the previous team: contact forms without HIPAA encryption, hosting arrangements without a BAA in place, or WCAG accessibility failures that create legal exposure. We document everything, prioritize what needs attention, and give you a clear picture before we take over the ongoing maintenance cycle.
Deeper reads pulled from our blog, all written with healthcare in mind.
Good to know
Yes, when it's configured and maintained correctly. WordPress itself isn't inherently HIPAA non-compliant. The compliance obligation comes from how the site is hosted, how data is handled, what plugins are used, and how those plugins are maintained. A well-configured WordPress site on HIPAA-compliant hosting, with properly architected forms and a disciplined update process, meets the technical safeguard requirements HIPAA requires. The risk comes from general-purpose setups where updates get deferred for months. That's exactly what ongoing maintenance prevents.
We apply updates on a defined schedule, not automatically to production. Every update cycle runs in a staging environment first. We verify the site functions correctly, forms work, integrations connect, and there are no visual or functional regressions before we push to the live site. This staging-first approach is especially important for healthcare sites where a broken scheduling integration has immediate patient-facing consequences.
It means your backup files are encrypted both during transfer and in storage, they're stored in an environment covered by a Business Associate Agreement with the backup infrastructure provider, restoration procedures are documented and tested, and you have a record of backup activity for compliance documentation purposes. A basic hosting plan backup to an unencrypted server doesn't meet this standard. Our healthcare maintenance plans include backup infrastructure that does.
We monitor the WordPress side of integrations, including the widgets, plugins, and connection configurations that link your site to Epic, Cerner, athenahealth, Phreesia, Healow, or whichever platforms you use. When an EHR vendor pushes an API change that affects how it connects to your site, we catch it during monitoring and address it before it affects patient-facing functionality. Maintenance within the EHR platform itself is outside our scope, but we coordinate with your EHR vendor's team when integration issues require it.
Yes. We work through an onboarding process that includes a site audit covering update history, hosting configuration, backup status, plugin inventory, and a compliance review of forms and analytics. Most sites we take over from other agencies have at least a few items that need attention before they're genuinely well-maintained. We document everything we find and give you a clear picture of where things stand before we take over the ongoing maintenance cycle.
Managed hosting starts at $99/mo. Care plans sit on top of that and are scoped based on your site's infrastructure, the number of integrations it carries, and your compliance requirements, so we'll give you a specific number after reviewing your site during a free consultation.
Still have questions? We're happy to answer them, let's connect.
Tell us about your project and we'll take a look. No pushy sales, no wasted calls.