Last updated October 26, 2026
Heartwood Letters ("Heartwood", "we") provides bereavement letter services to hospices. This policy explains what information we handle and how we protect it. It covers our website, the hospice portal, and the reply pages families reach from their letters.
To produce bereavement letters, a hospice gives us a family member's name and mailing address, the name of their loved one, the date of death and, optionally, a birthday, language preference, email or phone number. This information is protected health information. We handle it as a business associate of the hospice under HIPAA and our Business Associate Agreement, which controls if it conflicts with this policy.
We use it only to write, print and mail the hospice's letters, to show the hospice's team their program, and to route families' requests back to the hospice. We never sell it, never use it for marketing, and never share it except with our print and mail partner, which is bound by its own Business Associate Agreement.
When a family member uses the link in a letter to ask for a call, update an address, or stop the letters, we pass that request to their hospice. We don't use it for anything else.
We keep the names, titles and work emails of hospice staff who use the portal, and the details hospices give us when they sign up or request a sample set. Our website doesn't use advertising trackers. We use only the cookies needed to keep you signed in.
Family records are encrypted at rest and decrypted only in memory when needed. All connections use HTTPS. Staff sign in with one-time email links, and every view or change of a family record is logged. Files sent to our printer are deleted within two days.
Family details are removed 180 days after a family's last letter or after their letters are stopped. We keep only the dates and types of each contact so the hospice has a record. When a hospice stops using Heartwood, we return or destroy its information as our Business Associate Agreement requires.
Family members can stop the letters at any time from the link in any letter, or by contacting their hospice. Hospice staff can ask us to correct or delete their account information by writing to hello@heartwoodletters.com.
Heartwood Letters, an AMVO Studios company. Questions about this policy: hello@heartwoodletters.com.
Heartwood Letters