Healthcare

In 2022, there were 707 publicly disclosed data breaches among healthcare firms, in which 51.9 million records were stolen. In healthcare, the importance of seamless information exchange cannot be overstated. Patient data, medical records, and critical documents need to flow securely and efficiently between healthcare providers, institutions, and payors to ensure the highest quality of care.

In this post, we will examine the critical role of secure cloud faxing in healthcare information exchange, addressing the challenges and risks associated with traditional faxing methods. We will also explore the benefits of transitioning to secure cloud faxing, discuss common obstacles faced during this transition, and glimpse into the future of healthcare information exchange with this innovative technology.

Understanding the Healthcare Interoperability Challenge

Healthcare interoperability refers to the ability of different healthcare systems and software applications to communicate, exchange, and use patient information seamlessly. Achieving interoperability is essential for providing coordinated and patient-centered care, reducing medical errors, and improving healthcare outcomes.

Healthcare interoperability is critical for coordinated care and patient outcomes. However, the current healthcare landscape faces significant obstacles, such as:

• Legacy systems and disparate software platforms hinder data sharing.
• Siloed information management leads to inefficiencies, delays, and increased costs.
• Patient data scattered across systems impedes access to complete records.

To address these issues and ensure data continuity, a secure and standardized solution is essential, and this is where secure cloud faxing plays a pivotal role.

The Evolution of Faxing in Healthcare

Faxing has been a staple in healthcare communication for decades. Its simplicity and wide adoption made it a convenient choice for transmitting medical records, prescriptions, and other important documents. However, the traditional faxing methods of using standalone fax machines and phone lines have significant limitations and vulnerabilities:

• Time-consuming processes.
• Human errors, such as sending faxes to the wrong recipients or document loss during transmission.
• Vulnerability to physical security risks like theft or mishandling.
• Costly maintenance of physical fax machines and paper records, which is also environmentally unfriendly.

In response to these challenges, healthcare organizations are increasingly adopting secure cloud faxing as a modern and efficient alternative.

Benefits of Secure Cloud Faxing

Secure cloud faxing offers a wide range of advantages that address the shortcomings of traditional faxing methods in healthcare:

1. Improved Data Security: Secure cloud faxing utilizes encryption and secure transmission protocols to protect sensitive patient information during transit. It ensures that only authorized recipients can access the faxed documents, reducing the risk of data breaches.
2. Accessibility: Cloud-based faxing solutions enable healthcare professionals to send and receive faxes from anywhere, using various devices, including smartphones, tablets, and computers. This flexibility improves accessibility and responsiveness in healthcare communication.
3. Cost-Efficiency: By eliminating the need for physical fax machines, paper, and phone lines, secure cloud faxing reduces operational costs significantly. It also minimizes the time and resources spent on manual fax handling.
4. Integration: Many secure cloud faxing solutions are designed to seamlessly integrate with electronic health record (EHR) systems and other healthcare software applications. This integration streamlines the faxing process and ensures that faxed documents become part of the patient’s digital medical record.

Overcoming Common Challenges

Transitioning to secure cloud faxing in healthcare can be met with several common challenges. It is essential to identify and address these obstacles to ensure a smooth transition:

1. Resistance to Change: Healthcare organizations may face resistance from staff members who are accustomed to traditional faxing methods. Effective training and change management strategies are crucial to overcome this challenge.
2. Compliance and Regulatory Concerns: Healthcare providers must adhere to strict regulations, such as HIPAA (Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act), to protect patient privacy and security. Secure cloud faxing solutions should meet these regulatory requirements and provide the necessary compliance features.
3. Integration with Existing Systems: Healthcare organizations often use a variety of software applications, including EHR systems, practice management software, and more. Ensuring seamless integration with these systems is essential to maintaining workflow efficiency.
4. Data Migration: Transitioning from paper-based faxing or older electronic fax systems may require the migration of existing fax data to the cloud. This process should be carefully planned to prevent data loss or corruption.

The Future of Healthcare Information Exchange with Secure Cloud Faxing

As the healthcare industry continues to evolve, so too does the role of secure cloud faxing in information exchange. Several emerging trends and innovations are shaping the future of healthcare communication:

1. AI and Automation: Artificial intelligence (AI) and automation are being integrated into secure cloud faxing solutions to streamline document routing, categorization, and processing. This enhances efficiency and reduces the burden on healthcare staff.
2. Telehealth Integration: According to the American Medical Association, the telehealth industry is going to continue to grow and expand into the future. The rise of telehealth services has increased the need for secure and efficient faxing solutions that can seamlessly integrate with virtual care platforms. This enables the quick sharing of documents between patients and healthcare providers.
3. Enhanced Security Measures: With the growing threat of cyberattacks, secure cloud faxing providers are continuously improving security measures, including advanced encryption, multi-factor authentication, and threat detection systems.
4. Interoperability Standards: Industry-wide efforts are underway to establish standardized interoperability frameworks and data exchange protocols. Secure cloud faxing solutions that align with these standards will play a crucial role in achieving true interoperability.

In Conclusion

The healthcare industry’s quest for seamless information exchange and interoperability has never been more critical. Secure cloud faxing represents a modern, efficient, and secure solution to the challenges posed by traditional faxing methods. By improving data security, accessibility, and cost-efficiency, secure cloud faxing is enabling healthcare organizations to deliver better patient care while complying with regulatory requirements.

Choose Softlinx for Healthcare Cloud Faxing

Softlinx is a trusted provider of tailored cloud faxing solutions for healthcare organizations. Our commitment to security, efficiency, and compliance sets us apart in the industry. Here are some reasons why you should consider Softlinx for your healthcare cloud faxing needs:

1. Robust Security Measures: Softlinx employs state-of-the-art encryption and security protocols to protect your sensitive patient data. We prioritize data security and privacy to ensure compliance with HIPAA and other regulations.
2. Seamless Integration: Our cloud faxing solutions seamlessly integrate with your existing healthcare software applications, including EHR systems and practice management software. This ensures a smooth workflow and enhanced efficiency.
3. Regulatory Compliance: Softlinx understands the complex regulatory landscape of healthcare. Our solutions are designed to help healthcare organizations meet compliance requirements effortlessly.

Contact us today or schedule a demo to learn more about how Softlinx can empower your healthcare organization with secure and efficient cloud faxing solutions. Together, we can revolutionize the way you exchange information in healthcare.

In an era defined by digital transformation, the healthcare industry stands at the forefront of embracing innovative solutions to address its unique challenges. Among these solutions, secure cloud faxing has emerged as a beacon of efficiency, security, and compliance. As healthcare organizations seek to optimize their communication workflows, ensure the confidentiality of patient information, and navigate the complex landscape of regulations like HIPAA, the evolution of cloud faxing becomes a critical conversation.

In this post, we will explore the intricacies of this transformation, shedding light on emerging trends and cutting-edge technologies that are reshaping the way healthcare communicates, collaborates, and secures its sensitive data. Read on to learn more.

Importance of Secure Cloud Faxing in the Healthcare Industry

As the heart of patient care and data management, healthcare organizations and the medical industry are increasingly recognizing the pivotal role secure cloud faxing plays in ensuring the continuity of care, safeguarding patient privacy, and enabling seamless collaboration. Here’s why it’s so crucial:

• Confidential Data Exchange: Secure cloud faxing acts as a virtual bridge that connects various stakeholders within the healthcare ecosystem. It allows for the exchange of sensitive patient data, medical records, test results, and treatment plans without compromising confidentiality.
• Medical Records Management: The healthcare industry thrives on the accurate and efficient management of medical records. Secure cloud faxing offers a reliable means to transmit these records, enabling healthcare providers to access essential patient information in a timely manner.
• Critical Communications: In emergency situations, timely communication can be a matter of life and death. Secure cloud faxing ensures that crucial information reaches the right parties promptly, allowing healthcare professionals to make informed decisions swiftly.
• Collaboration Across Providers and Payers: Secure cloud faxing for healthcare bridges the communication gap between various entities, such as hospitals, clinics, laboratories, insurance companies, and pharmacies, fostering a collaborative environment that enhances patient care.
• Efficiency in Workflows: As healthcare workflows grow increasingly complex, the need for streamlined processes becomes paramount. Secure cloud faxing eliminates the delays and manual interventions associated with traditional methods, boosting overall operational efficiency.
• HIPAA Compliance: Adhering to regulations like HIPAA is non-negotiable in healthcare. Secure cloud faxing aligns seamlessly with these standards, ensuring that patient data remains protected and compliant with privacy regulations.

Growing Concerns about Data Security and Compliance

In the dynamic landscape of the healthcare industry, data security and regulatory compliance have become cornerstones of patient trust and organizational integrity. However, the vulnerabilities inherent in traditional faxing methods have raised red flags throughout the healthcare sector. Outdated fax machines, paper-based transmissions, and physical delivery processes pose a significant risk to the confidentiality of patient information. The potential for failed delivery, interception, and unauthorized access has underscored the urgency for a more secure, efficient, and compliant communication approach.

Transforming Cloud Faxing: Current Challenges

The limitations of traditional fax machines are clear—a lack of integration, security vulnerabilities, and administrative bottlenecks. These challenges have long hindered the seamless exchange of vital healthcare information, impeding the progress of patient care and collaboration among medical professionals. The security risks tied to traditional faxing methods have become increasingly concerning, as the healthcare industry grapples with the imperative of protecting patient data from potential breaches and unauthorized access.

Emerging Trends in Cloud Faxing for Healthcare

As the healthcare industry marches forward in the digital age, cloud faxing is undergoing a profound transformation. This evolution goes beyond mere modernization—it’s a reimagining of how healthcare institutions communicate, collaborate, and manage information. Emerging trends are shaping the future of cloud faxing, ensuring that healthcare stays at the cutting edge of secure, efficient, and compliant communication.

Here are the trends poised to reshape the landscape:

• Integration with Electronic Health Records (EHRs): Seamlessly merging fax communication with EHRs ensures comprehensive and easily accessible patient information.

• Encryption and Secure Transmission: Employing advanced encryption techniques and secure transmission protocols safeguards data throughout the faxing process.
• Mobile-Friendly Solutions: Accessible from anywhere, anytime, mobile-friendly cloud faxing enhances collaboration and responsiveness.
• Fax Automation and Workflow Optimization: Automation streamlines workflows, reducing manual efforts and improving overall efficiency.
• Hybrid Faxing Solutions: Integrating cloud and on-premises capabilities offers flexibility and ensures business continuity.
• Machine Learning for Data Recognition: Machine learning enables automated data recognition and classification, saving time and minimizing errors.

Key Technologies Shaping the Future

As healthcare providers strive to uphold patient privacy and streamline their operations, key technologies are emerging to reshape the landscape of secure cloud faxing. These technologies not only fortify the security of patient information but also drive efficiency and innovation. Examples include:

• Advanced Encryption: Cutting-edge encryption ensures end-to-end security for transmitted data.
• Artificial Intelligence (AI): AI automates fax processes and extracts essential information, enhancing accuracy and speed.
• Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA): MFA guarantees secure access control, protecting sensitive information.
• Secure File Transfer Protocol (SFTP): Encrypted data transmission through SFTP guarantees data integrity.
• Secure Cloud-Based Fax APIs: Developers can leverage APIs to craft customized, secure faxing applications.

Ensuring HIPAA Compliance with Secure Cloud Faxing

Understanding and adhering to HIPAA regulations is non-negotiable in healthcare. Secure cloud faxing provides the framework to meet these requirements seamlessly, ensuring patient confidentiality and regulatory compliance.

Benefits of Secure Cloud Faxing in Healthcare

• Enhanced Security and Confidentiality: Sensitive patient information remains confidential, ensuring compliance and patient trust.
• Streamlined Workflows: Automation reduces administrative overhead, allowing healthcare professionals to focus on patient care.
• Cost-Effectiveness and Environmental Benefits: Cloud faxing minimizes costs associated with traditional faxing and reduces paper waste.

In Conclusion: Embracing the Future

Secure cloud faxing is no longer just an option; it’s a necessity for the modern healthcare ecosystem. By embracing emerging trends and innovative technologies, healthcare organizations can elevate their data security, streamline workflows, and ensure HIPAA compliance.

Choosing the Right Provider: Trust Softlinx

When it comes to secure, HIPAA-compliant healthcare cloud faxing, Softlinx stands as a leader. With a track record of expertise, compliance, and customer satisfaction, Softlinx offers advanced features, unmatched support, and a commitment to safeguarding your healthcare communication needs.

Contact us to learn more about Softlinx and revolutionize your healthcare communication.

Join us in paving the way for a more secure and efficient future in healthcare communication. Trust in the power of secure cloud faxing and take your healthcare organization to new heights of innovation and compliance. Schedule your free demo now.

Cloud technology has become increasingly crucial in the medical industry, fundamentally transforming how healthcare organizations function. In fact, the global healthcare cloud computing market crossed $39.4 billion in 2022, and is poised to grow at a CAGR of 17.8% in the next five years to reach $89.4 billion. Medical businesses must adapt to these major technological advancements. In this article, we will delve into the advantages of secure cloud faxing, highlight the significance of cloud technology in medical workflows, and explore future trends and innovations that will shape the medical industry’s use of cloud technology.

Understanding Cloud Technology in the Medical Industry

Cloud technology refers to the delivery of computing resources, such as storage, servers, databases, and software, over the internet. Its key advantages for healthcare organizations are numerous. The cloud provides scalability, flexibility, and cost savings, enabling healthcare providers to streamline their operations and improve patient care.

Secure Cloud Faxing as a Crucial Component of Medical Communications

Secure cloud faxing plays a crucial role in medical communications. It allows healthcare organizations to transmit sensitive patient information quickly and securely. By leveraging cloud-based faxing solutions, healthcare providers can ensure compliance with HIPAA regulations and protect patient data confidentiality. With secure cloud faxing, healthcare organizations can transmit medical records, test results, and other critical information with confidence, knowing that the information is secure and protected throughout the transmission process.

HIPAA Compliance and Security in Medical Faxing

HIPAA compliance is of paramount importance in the medical industry. It ensures the protection of patient privacy and security. HIPAA-compliant cloud faxing solutions offer the following:

• Encryption
• Access controls
• Audit trails
• Data integrity
• Risk mitigation
• Compliance documentation
• Data loss prevention
• Business associate agreements (BAAS)
• Ongoing security updates

By leveraging HIPAA-compliant cloud faxing solutions, healthcare organizations can ensure compliance with HIPAA regulations, protect patient privacy, and maintain the security of faxed data throughout its lifecycle.

Enhancing Medical Workflows with Cloud Technology

Cloud technology enhances medical workflows by streamlining processes, facilitating collaboration, and enabling remote healthcare services. It simplifies medical records management, eliminating the need for manual handling of faxes and reducing administrative tasks. Additionally, cloud-based telemedicine platforms empower healthcare providers to deliver care remotely, improving accessibility and patient outcomes.

Benefits of HIPAA-Compliant Cloud Faxing in Medical Communications

Cloud faxing brings numerous benefits to medical communications:

• Streamlining Workflow Processes: Integrated faxing capabilities streamline healthcare organizations’ workflows, reducing administrative tasks and increasing productivity.
• Improved Collaboration and Communication: Cloud faxing allows for easy sharing of faxed documents among authorized team members. This enables faster decision-making, improved coordination of care, and enhanced patient outcomes.
• Enhanced Data Security and Compliance: HIPAA-compliant cloud faxing solutions ensure the confidentiality and integrity of patient data, helping healthcare organizations maintain compliance with HIPAA regulations and avoid potential legal and financial risks.
• Benefits of High Availability and Disaster Recovery Service Infrastructure: Cloud faxing offers business continuity, providing more reliable faxing capabilities and ensuring data availability even during disruptions.
• Scalability and Flexibility: Cloud faxing accommodates the evolving needs of healthcare organizations, allowing for easy scaling up or down of faxing capabilities based on demand. It also enables authorized users to send and receive faxes securely from any location, supporting remote work and telehealth initiatives.
• Cost Savings: By eliminating the need for physical fax machines, supplies, and maintenance, cloud faxing helps reduce costs associated with traditional faxing methods. This leads to significant cost savings over time.

Implementing HIPAA-Compliant Cloud Faxing

Consider the following best practices for implementing HIPAA-compliant cloud faxing for healthcare organizations.

Choose a Trustworthy Cloud Faxing Provider

It is important to choose a reputable and experienced cloud faxing provider that specializes in healthcare. This ensures dependable and secure faxing services that comply with HIPAA regulations and prioritize the protection of sensitive patient information.

The most reliable cloud faxing providers specialize in healthcare and have a deep understanding of HIPAA regulations and the critical importance of protecting sensitive patient information. They will have implemented stringent security measures and encryption protocols to ensure the confidentiality of faxed data. Such providers will also have robust safeguards in place to prevent unauthorized access, data breaches, and potential compliance violations.

Evaluate Security Measures and Encryption Protocols

Healthcare organizations must thoroughly assess the security measures and encryption protocols offered by cloud faxing providers. This evaluation ensures that the chosen solution aligns with HIPAA requirements. It also provides robust safeguards for the confidentiality and integrity of patient data during transmission.

Your cloud faxing provider should implement strong encryption mechanisms, such as TLS (Transport Layer Security) or SSL (Secure Sockets Layer), to protect data during transit. Additionally, access controls, authentication mechanisms, and audit trails should be in place to ensure data security and compliance with HIPAA regulations.

Prioritize Seamless Integration with Medical Systems and Processes

To maximize efficiency and minimize disruption, healthcare organizations should focus on seamlessly integrating cloud faxing into their existing medical systems and workflows. This integration should be carefully planned and executed to ensure a smooth transition and optimal utilization of the cloud faxing solution.

The best cloud faxing providers will have experience integrating their solutions with a variety of medical systems, such as electronic health records (EHR) or practice management systems. They will work closely with your organization to understand your specific workflows and requirements. This will ensure that the cloud faxing solution seamlessly integrates into your existing infrastructure. This approach minimizes disruptions, streamlines processes, and enhances productivity.

Future Trends and Innovations in Cloud Technology for the Medical Industry

Looking ahead, several trends and innovations are expected to shape the medical industry’s use of cloud technology:

• The Role of Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning: Cloud-based solutions that leverage artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) will play a significant role in transforming healthcare. These technologies can analyze vast amounts of patient data, identify patterns, and make accurate predictions. AI and ML-powered cloud solutions have the potential to enhance diagnostics, personalize treatments, and improve patient outcomes by enabling more precise and efficient decision-making.
• Advancements in Data Analytics and Predictive Healthcare: The cloud provides a scalable infrastructure for healthcare organizations to harness and analyze large volumes of data. By leveraging cloud-based data analytics tools, healthcare providers can gain valuable insights, facilitate predictive healthcare, and make data-driven decisions. Predictive analytics in the cloud can help with early disease detection, treatment planning, and population health management.
• Emerging Technologies and Their Impact on Medical Workflows: The convergence of cloud technology with emerging technologies is set to transform medical workflows. For example, blockchain technology can enhance data security, integrity, and interoperability, enabling secure sharing and access to medical records. The Internet of Medical Things (IoMT), where medical devices are connected to the cloud, can enable real-time monitoring, remote patient management, and improved coordination of care. Virtual reality (VR) technology integrated with the cloud has the potential to revolutionize medical training, simulation, and patient engagement.

In Conclusion

Cloud technology has revolutionized medical workflows and communications. Secure cloud faxing plays a crucial role in healthcare organizations. By embracing HIPAA-compliant cloud fax solutions, healthcare providers can unlock the transformative power of secure communication. This will inevitably lead to improved patient care and operational efficiency.

Contact Softlinx for HIPAA-Compliant Cloud Faxing Technology

Healthcare organizations seeking a reliable and secure solution for HIPAA-compliant cloud faxing can trust Softlinx. Our expertise in healthcare communication solutions enables us to offer a comprehensive suite of services that prioritize data security, seamless integration, and compliance with industry regulations. By partnering with Softlinx, medical organizations can enjoy the benefits of efficient and secure cloud faxing, streamline their workflows, and ensure the privacy of patient information. Contact us to learn more, or schedule a demo now.

Privacy laws like the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) play a critical role in the healthcare industry, governing how organizations handle sensitive information. If you transmit patient health information via fax, this standard applies to you.

This guide will discuss how privacy laws affect faxing and how to ensure HIPAA compliance with faxes.

What Is HIPAA?

The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act is a federal law passed in 1996 to protect sensitive patient health information. Based on this law, national standards were established to prevent health information from being disclosed without patient knowledge or consent.

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services enforced the requirements of HIPAA by issuing the HIPAA Privacy Rule. This set of standards addresses how organizations use and transmit health information to protect the privacy of those who seek care. These guidelines aim to protect patients’ health information by setting use limitations while still allowing for high-quality healthcare delivery.

How Does HIPAA Impact Faxing?

While most individuals don’t associate HIPAA and faxing with one another, these terms share a crucial connection. If you work in healthcare, you likely transfer sensitive patient information using faxes. HIPAA laws require that you protect this data during utilization and disclosure, which includes faxing.

The majority of healthcare offices use faxes to transmit patient information. If any of these facilities send sensitive information to the wrong recipient, they can incur serious HIPAA penalties for noncompliance. That’s why healthcare organizations must use fax solutions optimized for HIPAA compliance to minimize the risk of accidental disclosure.

HIPAA-compliant faxing solutions have security features like data encryption, page-by-page confirmation and real-time data transfer. These safeguards prevent patient information from being compromised or misdirected.

The Difference Between Meeting HIPAA Regulations With Online Fax Versus Traditional On-Premises Fax

Healthcare providers that use traditional on-premises fax solutions experience difficulty meeting HIPAA compliance standards due to the many security challenges posed by these outdated technologies. With advanced online fax solutions, organizations can send a HIPAA compliant fax securely and seamlessly.

Fax Machine Access

Traditional fax machines can print incoming patient health information at any time, leaving physical copies of this information temporarily unattended on the printer. This lack of access control can pose serious patient privacy and security risks by leaving information exposed.

Through online cloud faxing, incoming faxes are transferred to the intended recipient using their unique fax number, preventing the information from being misdirected. The patient information is also encrypted, so it can only be read by authorized individuals.

Fax Cover Sheets

All faxes containing patient health information must have a protective cover sheet as required by HIPAA. This cover sheet indicates that the document includes confidential health information and is not to be transferred to another party without express patient consent, in the absence of which it must be destroyed.

Online faxes allow you to customize your cover sheets to include all required disclosures and enforce them by department, user or across the entire organization.

Fax Transmission Records

When transmitting paper faxes, senders must create and retain confirmation copies containing transmission and transaction log summaries, along with the date, time and the recipient’s fax number. Online fax technologies take detailed records of all your fax transmissions and receipts, making report generation effortless.

Received Fax Security

Traditional on-premises faxing requires that received faxes be securely stored immediately upon removal from a physical fax device. Cloud-based faxing solutions send received faxes directly to the intended receiver’s email. Once the fax has been sent, all data and images within the fax are wiped from the faxing platform to prevent access by third parties.

How to Ensure HIPAA Compliance With Faxes From Softlinx

At Softlinx, we offer HIPAA compliant fax services to help healthcare facilities protect their patients’ sensitive health information. We’ve spent over 20 years providing our customers with innovative enterprise information technology (IT) solutions to help them optimize their document workflow processes and maximize profits.

We offer a HIPAA compliant electronic fax service called ReplixFax for the healthcare industry. This system is designed to protect confidential patient information while maintaining business continuity through safeguards such as:

• Advanced data encryption.
• Safe data transmission over secure IP networks.
• Secure centralized storage.
• Intrusion detection and prevention.
• Multifactor authentication.

ReplixFax maintains detailed logs of all faxes, retrievals, deletions and inquiries to facilitate audits. Due to our secure network, our data center is fully compliant with the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants (AICPA), HIPAA and Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS) standards.

Send HIPAA Compliant Faxes With Solutions From Softlinx

You can bridge the gap between HIPAA and faxing with HIPAA compliant fax services from Softlinx. When you outsource your faxing to cloud services with us, we’ll help you leverage greater cost savings, productivity and compliance.

Schedule a free live demo to explore our solutions today!

Implementing safeguards for medical privacy laws per the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA) is crucial for all healthcare organizations, whether protected information is communicated over the phone or via email. As long as the patient provides their consent, healthcare providers can safely send and receive protected health information (PHI) via encrypted emails or cloud faxes. However, obtaining the patient’s consent is not enough — the fax must be HIPAA compliant per the federal law restricting the release of medical information.

Learn more about the importance of medical HIPAA compliant fax cover sheets and other technical safeguarding measures healthcare organizations can use to protect ePHI.

What Are PHI and ePHI? 

Protected health information is any health information with a patient’s personal identifiers, such as a name, date of birth or social security number. Any PHI that is electronically transmitted, whether by email or fax, is known as ePHI.

Why Do Faxes Need a Cover Sheet?

Because a cover sheet is the first thing the recipient will see when they open the fax, it is a physical barrier of protection. A medical HIPAA compliant fax cover sheet is a technical safeguard to deter accidental viewing and disclosure of protected information.

What Should a HIPAA Fax Cover Sheet Contain?

There are a few fields all HIPAA compliant fax cover sheets should include to keep the sender and the unauthorized recipient safe from an unintentional data breach. If you opt to download a free cover sheet template online, be sure to check for the following fields:

Patient/HIPAA Information

• The patient’s name and reference number
• The date and time you sent the fax
• A HIPAA cover sheet disclaimer

Sender Information

• Name of the individual sender
• Name of the covered entity or organization
• The sender’s fax number and phone number

Recipient Information

• Name of the individual recipient
• Name of the recipient’s organization
• The recipient’s fax number and phone number

What Is an Example of a HIPAA Fax Disclaimer?

Your fax cover sheet will also require a HIPAA disclaimer. A HIPAA disclaimer serves to:

• Notify the recipient the fax contains classified patient health information.
• Safeguard against unauthorized viewing if the recipient is unfamiliar with HIPAA regulations.
• Protect the covered entity from liability should the information be viewed, copied or distributed.

A HIPAA disclaimer is reasonably straightforward by nature. First, it should state that HIPAA protects the fax’s enclosed information. Second, it should specify that if the recipient is not the intended individual or entity, they must contact and inform the sender of receipt and arrange the fax’s return or destruction.

Like cover sheet templates, you can find HIPAA fax disclaimer examples online. Here’s ours:

IMPORTANT: This fax contains confidential information, some or all of which is protected health information defined by the federal Health Insurance Portability & Accountability Act (HIPAA) Privacy Rule. This fax is exclusively intended for the entity or individual to whom it is addressed because it contains proprietary, privileged, protected and/or exempt information that is exempt from disclosure by federal law.

If you are not the addressed recipient (or an employee or agent responsible for delivery of this fax transmission to the intended individual or entity), you are hereby notified that disclosure, dissemination, copying, or distribution of the information enclosed is prohibited and you may be subject to legal restriction or sanction. Please notify the sender via telephone to arrange the return or destruction of the information enclosed and all copies.

Why Should Organizations Use a HIPAA Fax Cover Sheet?

It may surprise healthcare providers to learn HIPAA regulations don’t definitively state you need to include a cover sheet when you send protected information via fax. However, a HIPAA fax cover sheet is the simplest way to deter unauthorized disclosure of sensitive information if the fax arrives in the wrong hands. A fax cover sheet’s overall purpose is threefold:

• It provides the sender’s contact information so the unintended recipient can inform the sender.
• It tells the recipient to whom the fax was sent to encourage them not to look at the contents if not permitted to do so.
• It protects the covered entity from liability should the fax be illegally viewed, copied or distributed.

What Other Measures Can You Take to Ensure Privacy?

Outside of using a HIPAA fax cover sheet and disclaimer, there are other practices you can carry out to ensure the safe delivery of protected information.

• Verify the fax number: Occasionally, fax numbers change or are entered incorrectly during sending. Before you send a fax, call the intended organization to verbally confirm with a representative that the fax number you have on file is up to date.
• Notify your recipients: Call the organization to notify them when you send protected information. You can do this when you call to confirm the fax number, but even if you’re confident the fax number is correct, it is best to inform the intended recipient the information is coming their way — in case the fax fails or delivers to the wrong number.
• Print a delivery confirmation: Once the fax is successfully delivered, print the delivery confirmation for physical documentation. You can also review the printed delivery confirmation to confirm the fax number one last time. Occasionally, you may not notice an error — especially if it is a single digit — until you see the number in print.

Send Secure, HIPAA Compliant Faxes With ReplixFax 

Many healthcare organizations opt for cloud-based faxing with a HIPAA fax service as a convenient method for creating HIPAA-compliant faxes. ReplixFax streamlines HIPAA compliance for healthcare providers and administrators with secured storage networks, Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) encryption and other built-in safeguards. Our solutions are audit-friendly, enhance communication between EHRs and facilitate multidevice access for combined convenience and compliance.

In short, we ensure your ePHI healthcare faxes deliver seamlessly and compliantly. We’ve designed our cloud-based fax services with busy, patient-centered healthcare organizations in mind. Our ReplixFax cloud fax service is easy to use on the go thanks to its intuitive interface, saving healthcare providers and administrators valuable time and energy. Using our email-to-fax interface, sending a fax is as simple as attaching a file to an email, addressing it to the recipient’s fax number and hitting send.

Contact us today to migrate your faxing to the cloud with our HIPAA-compliant cloud fax service for healthcare organizations.

The technology used in a fax machine has remained largely unchanged since its invention in the 1960’s. So why do businesses still use fax machines? They offer several advantages like security and a universal acceptance. However, there are quite a few downsides to the traditional fax. A fax machine uses lots of paper which is bad for the environment. Not only that, but faxes are not always as secure as they should be.

Thankfully, cloud faxing offers a great solution to all of the problems associated with a traditional fax machine. Less paper, less expense and an adherence to HIPAA fax service guideline. All of these are good reasons to throw out the fax machine and join the 21st century. This is especially true if you work in the healthcare industry.

HIPAA Fax Services for a Green Office

One of the greatest advantages of using cloud faxing is that you’ll always know that your documents will be in an HIPAA fax-compliant format. You won’t have to worry about security or people intercepting anything you send. This can be invaluable for any individual, business or corporation that needs to send documents securely.

When you send a cloud fax, it’s automatically delivered to a person’s inbox. This has the added benefit of nobody being able to intercept the physical fax as it comes out of the machine. An outsourced cloud fax service will allow you to keep track of your monthly expenses as well. When you use a fax machine, you have to keep track of the costs of paper, ink, the phone line, machine repair, and the cost of new machines. When you switch over to a cloud faxing service, you’ll be able to send HIPAA faxes without all those annoying expense reports to deal with.

Go Green in Your Healthcare Organization

If you work in the medical field, should all of your healthcare-related faxes be HIPAA certified? The answer is a resounding yes! Patient security is a crucial part of transmitting any sensitive information between two places. Again, you can see the benefit of using a cloud faxing service. With all healthcare faxes delivered straight to a doctor’s inbox, it makes it less likely that they will fall into the wrong hands.

When it comes to sending healthcare faxes, it’s not just doctors that can benefit from this technology either. Cloud faxing is a popular choice for pharmacies, home hospice companies and medical billing agencies. Because the technology is backwards compatible with a traditional fax, it’s an easy technology to embrace in the workplace.

Going Green in Your Office

From an environmental standpoint, cloud faxing is one of the biggest positive changes you can make in your office. You might already know this, but producing paper is actually one of the worst industrial processes for the environment. The production process requires a massive amount of trees, electricity and water. Not only that, but paper production ranks fourth as the worst industrial polluter.

In the US alone, fax machines use an astounding 200 billion sheets of paper every year. That’s an astronomical number that is really inexcusable. With the advantages offered by a HIPAA fax service there is no reason to continue sending so many physical faxes. In fact, if only 5% of corporations stopped sending manual faxes, we could save more than 1 million trees a year!

Cutting down on paper usage should be a priority because globally only about 10% of trees are responsibly sourced. That means that 90% of the trees used to make paper can potentially be harvested in a non-renewable manner. Considering that the average fax machine uses 5,000 sheets of paper annually, this is a huge blow to the environment.

Contact Softlinx

Cloud faxing offers a good solution to a number of different problems associated with the traditional fax machine. It’s HIPAA compliant, it’s more secure, and no paper is wasted. Join the growing list of businesses that have thrown out their fax machines, and replaced it with something better. Schedule a demo of our HIPAA fax service today.

When asked if they were willing to share personal health information (PHI), 73% of Americans responded they would do so if healthcare providers could use it to improve patient care. People are generally happy to share their information if it means better care, but what are healthcare organizations doing with that data when they get it? Are they using it effectively to meet the same goal?

In our technology-driven world, healthcare organizations must be using patient data efficiently, securely and effectively. In recent years, many technologies have appeared precisely for this purpose. They’re an excellent resource for these organizations and are quickly becoming a necessity in many fields. Before we discuss these helpful technologies, let’s look at why they’re so necessary.

The Costs of Inefficient Health Data Exchange

Inefficient data exchange is never a good thing, but it has more significant consequences in the healthcare field than in other businesses. It could cause important patient information to be missed or misinterpreted, or it could lead to providers spending more time than necessary on data collection and entry, leaving less time for important patient care. Both can result in poorer patient outcomes and increased healthcare costs overall.

Most facilities use electronic health records (EHR) or customer relationship management (CRM) systems. These are great resources, but they often feature proprietary designs that don’t communicate well with other systems. They are not interoperable and lead to disparate platforms that cause inefficient data exchange.

What Is Interoperability?

Interoperability refers to the way information systems “talk” to each other. An interoperable system is one that can access, exchange, interpret and integrate data across different devices, platforms and other systems. It allows for healthcare systems to send and receive data in a way that’s understandable to the user.

We can break down interoperability into four different levels, each one representing a more involved method:

• Level 1 — Foundational: Interconnectivity in one system allows it to securely send data to and receive data from another system.
• Level 2 — Structural: This type of interoperability includes the organization, format and syntax of data exchange, including at the level of the data field, for further interpretation.
• Level 3 — Semantic: Common underlying models and data codification offers shared understanding and meaning to the user, providing readable results at the end of the exchange.
• Level 4 — Organizational: The governance, social, legal, policy and organizational considerations that facilitate seamless, secure, timely communication and data use within and between organizations, individuals and entities.

What Is Health Information Exchange?

Health information exchange (HIE) covers different forms of electronic data and allows healthcare professionals to share information securely while maintaining the meaning of the information. With the right kind of HIE in place, practitioners can create a more complete picture of the patient’s health, with full histories and medications directly gathered from providers. HIE facilitates the access and retrieval of data to support better care and secure data exchange.

Some of the benefits of HIE include:

• Reducing medical errors and oversights.
• Eliminating unnecessary paperwork and time-consuming data entry.
• Improving patient involvement in their care.
• Offering better tools and resources for practitioners.
• Facilitating more efficient operations overall, reducing healthcare costs.

Technologies That Offer Secure Data Exchange in Healthcare 

Fortunately, there are many ways we can facilitate efficient and secure HIE. Typically, we do this through new interoperability technologies, such as the following:

1. Direct Secure Messaging

The DirectTrust Network is a reputable system of secure data exchange with specific recipients. It works similarly to sending an email and was created as a low-cost system for interoperability between healthcare providers.

With the help of DirectTrust, healthcare providers can send and receive information on a common system for much easier communications.

2. Query-Based Exchange

With a query-based exchange system, providers can share and access patient health information through reciprocal agreements. After signing an agreement to use the data ethically, responsibly and in accordance with the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA), providers can access a centralized hub with data shared amongst providers. This system’s framework was designed for interoperability. It standardizes patient data as well to improve readability and efficiency for users.

Query-based exchange is often necessary during unplanned care, such as emergency room visits or visits from a pregnant patient. It allows for providers to access necessary data to deliver the right care.

3. Healthcare APIs

Healthcare application programming interfaces (APIs) are useful tools that can connect disparate software systems and send data between them, regardless of the format or source information. One example might be connecting a provider’s EHR with an insurance system to determine coverage. APIs can be wide-reaching and cover a variety of functions. They’re often used to close the gap between systems that don’t traditionally communicate.

If a system uses many different APIs, management of that system can get difficult. Those APIs will need regular updating and use, and they likely need to convert data into readable formats between the two systems.

4. Cloud Fax

Historically, faxing has been a big part of healthcare operations, and many practices still use it. But traditional faxing is outdated and creates many inefficiencies from security needs to processing paperwork. Cloud faxing systems provide all the functionality of a traditional fax but in a much more efficient and effective manner. The system is HIPAA-compliant and HITRUST CSF-certified, moving traditional faxing to the digital world.

With these systems, users can send, receive and store their faxes digitally. This approach offers a more secure method of storage and eliminates the need for time-consuming paperwork. It’s a great resource for digital information sharing, especially when working with providers that still use traditional fax methods.

Improve Interoperability & Enhance Secure Data Exchange With Softlinx

If you’re looking for ways to improve your healthcare organization’s efficiency and interoperability, consider cloud-based faxing and other tools offered by Softlinx. We can help you meet compliance requirements while eliminating inefficiencies and helping your providers deliver better care overall. Industry leaders across healthcare and other fields have trusted Softlinx to help bring efficiency and high-tech capabilities to their organizations.

Our HIPAA-compliant cloud faxing service delivers all the appropriate safeguards for handling and storing confidential patient data. Other services that can help you boost efficiency throughout healthcare facilities include Fax over IP and barcode fax document workflows.

To learn more about improving interoperability and guranteeing secure data exchange in your organization, reach out to a knowledgeable associate at Softlinx today.

HIPAA-compliant fax services are a must for any organization or body that interacts with PHI. This also means third-party vendors or re-sellers could have access to PHI, not necessarily for their own daily, mission-critical operations, but because the nature of their work puts them in such a position.

The following three types of organizations should review their current faxing practices and infrastructure to see if they could benefit from cloud-based PHI partnerships.

Healthcare Independent Software Vendors (ISVs)

Independent software vendors package products for medical institutions’ administrative ease, from clinics and hospitals to private practices. They allow for doctors, nurses and office support staff to more readily perform the everyday administrative work that goes with running such an institution, from accounting and finance tasks to managing patients’ medical data, and faxing a patient’s chart over to a referral doctor.

Cloud-based faxing applications are attractive to ISVs because it allows these vendors to package a more dynamic and appealing product. This is because they enable their product to send and receive healthcare documents via fax from within the application. When a clinic’s personnel can log onto one computer program to perform a variety of tasks, their workflows are made fundamentally easier.

Examples

A handful of significant healthcare independent software systems are on the market today that benefit from HIPAA-compliant fax service integration, including:

• Electronic Health Record (EHR) Software: EHR programs are standard across today’s medical institutions. Indeed, not having one in your hospital or clinic could spell government penalties. This is because EHR software tends to cover all the processes that make a medical institution operate successfully and on-par with industry standards. With cloud-based faxing implemented into EHR systems, everything from billing and ordering tests and prescriptions to communicating with referral doctors is streamlined.
• Healthcare Practice Management (PM) Software: Similar to EHR systems, healthcare-specific practice management systems helps medical offices run smoothly. It tends to assist less with the healthcare-technical side of operations, though, and more with the business. It helps with building and patient processing operations, such as scheduling visits or running an insurance eligibility test. It can also make tasks like medical claims and reimbursements far easier. When combined with cloud-based faxing, organizations have a more thorough workflow that directly increases its ability to manage and process patient needs.
• Radiology Imaging System (RIS) Software: RIS software is an image-centric platform to manage medical imagery and its associated patient data. While most other ISV’s products are inherently text and program-based, an RIS application allows for deeper management of things like radiology imaging orders, scans and image archives. Like other programs, these images can be turned into reports and charts for more comprehensive patient files.
• Medical Billing Software: As the name suggests, medical billing software houses the often-complicated and multi-step process of healthcare and insurance billing. Without medical billing software, an office would be stymied by communicating with insurance companies and patients alike on various payment matters. A cloud-based fax system set up within billing software only helps amplify these operations, turning one of the most challenging facets of the healthcare system into a single, smooth electronic transaction.
• Other Healthcare-Related Programs and Applications: The benefits of having even a basic faxing-platform integration directly speeds up all processes in administrative work. Combined with the cloud-based storage and a partnered data center, offices quickly find they have less on their plates to manage while improving their workflows and HIPAA compliance strategies.

Healthcare Service Organizations

From hospitals and clinics to specialized care centers and assisted-living facilities, it falls on medical institutions themselves to enact compliant practices and technological systems. While these organizations often partner with other companies or vendors to do so, the accountability ultimately rests on them.

Healthcare service organizations that don’t follow HIPAA’s electronic communication and e-PHI transfers could face the following penalties:

• Did-Not-Know or Reasonable Cause Fines: $100 to $50,000, depending on the severity of their negligence and how many violation incidents have occurred.
• Willful Neglect Fines: HIPAA violations that were identified and corrected but caused serious ramifications, such as data breaches, face fines that start at $10,000. Willful-neglected incompliance that was not corrected internally and identified by an audit begins in the $50,000 and go all the way up to multimillion-dollar sanctions.
• Disciplinary Actions or Termination: In cases of employee-data mismanagement where specific individuals have been identified as the source of incompliance, disciplinary measures may take place. If the incompliance oversights were serious enough, termination would occur.
• Criminal Prosecution: Healthcare organizations deemed to knowingly and repeatedly breach HIPAA can be reported to the Department of Justice, who in turn can press criminal charges based on the levels of pretense or malicious intent.

A HIPAA-compliant fax service alleviates compliance concerns at one of the most basic functions of a healthcare service organization. Something as simple as faxing doesn’t need to cause compliance headaches. Whether an organization is moving away from manually faxes, looking to strengthen their PHI-data storage or lacking a comprehensive new faxing solution altogether, cloud-based services can deliver.

IT Service Providers

IT service providers work with healthcare organizations as reseller partners. They have a distinct place in the industry, usually partnering as an outsourced IT management or data-storage vendor but looking to bolster their service offerings.

These providers already have established relationships with their healthcare clients. They know about niche operations that a care facility or medical center may not have the resources to dedicate to and can complement that knowledge with something as fundamental as cloud fax services.

IT service providers will often resell internet-based software as part of their suites. They’ll also help install the software into their client’s current PC and IT systems using application program interface (API) best practices. This strengthens its usability and ensuring their clients don’t have to face long system-training downtimes. These sorts of partnerships also come with business associate agreements, mandated by HIPAA as an assurance that all parties with access to PHI are following Title II regulations and protecting patient information. These are essential documents that exist between healthcare providers and their third-party vendors, and one an institution should never ignore.

Stay Competitive With Softlinx Solutions

With ReplixFax secure faxing services for insurance companies, professionals have the tools they need to do their jobs more efficiently. They can send and receive faxes quickly, with the help of automatic processing functions and workflow integration methods. Our secure online faxing system offers solutions to the problems that plague many businesses. If you need to cut costs and improve the efficiency of your operations, cloud faxing and Softlinx can help. Our state-of-the-art secure fax document delivery can keep you compliant and your clients safe, while our flexible and easy-to-use interface makes faxing as simple as sending an email. You can get rid of that slow fax machine and spend time focusing on insurance. We can help you streamline your entire system for a more efficient, cost-effective method of faxing. After setup, we also offer 24/7 support, ready to step in and help at any time.

Learn more about ReplixFax by Softlinx and how secure fax services can help your business. Contact us today to see a live demo by calling (800) 899-7724, emailing our sales team at sales@softlinx.com, or by filling out our online form.

Faxing is an essential mode of communication and document transmission for many companies across the world. It’s one of the most secure and convenient ways to transport a document from point A to point B and is a safer method of sending private data than many alternatives. But with the latest technological improvements and a newfound focus on software over hardware, the traditional fax system is outdated. However, electronic fax filing is a direct alternative that takes the convenience and security of faxing and consolidates it with your internet-based workflow. By migrating to cloud services rather than continuing with outmoded legacy units, you’ll save your company money and time while promoting increased productivity among your employees. This guide will take you through some of the top reasons to switch to electronic fax filing and explain how your business can benefit from cloud services.

What Is Electronic Fax Filing?

Many industries use fax services to transmit information. It’s been a staple of offices around the world for the past few decades and remains a popular method of sending and receiving documents and data. But with the advancements in cloud-based services and software technology, the traditional methods have been decreasing in popularity, and more companies are turning to alternative options, like electronic fax filing.

Online faxing — also referred to as online cloud faxing, electronic fax filing or e-fax — is one of the top options, directly resolving many issues related to traditional faxing and providing multiple benefits as well. It’s a reliable form of data transmission that uses internet services, rather than telephone lines, to send transmissions, and they can save businesses a significant amount of time and money.

The goal of any e-fax solution is to virtualize and streamline your communication processes. Traditional faxing systems are prohibitive and can often hold your employees back. They require the sender or receiver to be on-premises, can only process one job at a time and leave a few security risks unchecked. While they were the best option for security at one point, advancements in business technology and software have allowed for a much safer and more capable process.

By using a cloud fax service, you can allow your workers more freedom and provide them with a system that integrates smoothly into their workflow. The electronic fax filing software provides each individual with a dashboard that’s accessible anywhere that has available internet access. They can send and receive faxes with ease and process multiple requests simultaneously, all while remaining compliant with industry security standards.

Online cloud fax is an excellent choice for companies in every industry, especially those that have to send confidential or sensitive documents back and forth. Many of these businesses are also subject to restrictions that prohibit them from sending private data via email or any other unsecured medium. For example, healthcare companies must observe and comply with HIPAA, which requires them to send sensitive information through secure online channels and restricts sending it in email format.

However, electronic fax filing makes compliance easy, as it’s more secure than email and traditional faxing. Sending faxes through online channels, rather than telephone lines, allows for encryption and ensures the information goes directly to your recipient. The document will safely sit in their inbox until they are ready to open and download it.

How Do You Use Electronic Fax Filing?

The process of using cloud fax services is relatively simple, especially if you’re familiar with the cloud. It’s a method of virtual hosting where a provider uses remote servers to store, process and access data, allowing your company to use the servers as a replacement for on-premises units. Moving your servers off-site is valuable, as it takes pressure off of your IT department, promotes cost savings and simplifies your workflow.

The faxing part of the equation is relatively similar to standard faxing, so there isn’t much of an understanding gap when you migrate from one to the other. Using cloud services can make the process simpler for most employees, reducing the amount of time you spend faxing and increasing overall productivity.

To use online faxing, you must first find a reliable provider like Softlinx. Once you’ve installed the relevant software and are on a service plan, you can begin faxing. Sending information is as easy as uploading your documents to the e-fax solution and inputting your desired recipient’s fax number or email. The software works to encrypt your data and transmit the documents to the correct address, providing your team with an easy way to send data, receive faxes and remain compliant.

Traditional Faxing vs. E-Fax

While traditional faxing has been the standard for years, e-fax use is gaining popularity. Online cloud faxing services are widely considered a stark improvement to the outdated traditional process, and companies that migrate to the new and improved version are seeing several benefits.

Here are the major differences between the traditional method of faxing and online fax services:

Traditional Faxing

Traditional faxing is an older form of transmitting documents, and it hasn’t changed much since it’s original inception. Still, many companies have used it as a reliable form of sending and receiving information in the past.

Some of the main characteristics of traditional faxing include:

• Requires supplies: To send and receive traditional faxes, you have to keep your office stocked with the proper kinds of paper and toner. They enable you to send and receive faxes, and keeping the units filled is essential to transmitting data.
• One fax at a time: Legacy faxes can only send or receive one document at a time. While that might be acceptable for small businesses that only send a few faxes per day, it can be a nuisance and cause a decline in productivity for larger companies and enterprises.
• Decent security: Since the beginning of faxing services, the process of transmitting information through fax has been a reliable and relatively secure way to send or receive data. However, it does leave some risk, as printed faxes remain open and available in a tray until the recipient files it safely. Also, every fax prints as a physical document, making the information susceptible to loss and requiring your employees to scan it to create a digital copy.
• On-premise system: Traditional faxing systems require your company to host your services on-premise, meaning you must have any necessary hardware internally. Additionally, maintenance and repairs are the responsibility of your IT department.
• Telephone service: Landline telephone services were much more popular during the early days of fax systems. Legacy units require telephone lines to transmit information to the recipient. As companies are moving away from using traditional telephone providers, they’re also moving towards cloud-based fax systems.

Electronic Fax Filing

While it does follow the same premise as traditional faxing, e-fax has a few significant advantages. Overall, it’s easier to integrate with the rest of your processes and workflow and can help you boost your company’s productivity while decreasing costs.

Some of the main characteristics of implementing an online fax service include:

• Direct downloading: Rather than printing as the sender transmits data, the recipient can download the files directly to their computer as a secure file. They can print the document if necessary, but the system doesn’t require it. However, the services are also backward compatible, meaning even legacy systems can decode the transmission if your recipient doesn’t use cloud services or requests you send to their fax number.
• Simultaneous fax capability: Since cloud faxing uses internet servers rather than telephone lines, the systems allow your employees to send or accept multiple faxes simultaneously. All they have to do is submit multiple documents or multiple fax jobs to the software.
• Excellent security: Where traditional faxing creates physical copies for anyone to see, online cloud faxing is about the safest way you can send sensitive data. It doesn’t print upon receipt. Instead, once you send a fax through the cloud server, it goes directly to the recipient’s inbox, encrypted and protected by their computer and email passwords. It removes the risk of accidental loss or theft from the equation.
• Off-premise system: When you partner with an online fax service provider, you have the advantage of the off-premise system. This shift means you won’t have to store, maintain or stock any hardware or supplies for the sake of faxing. You can complete every function from a computer, and your IT department won’t have to worry about resolving fax issues or preventing downtime. The off-premise setup also means e-fax costs are significantly lower than traditional systems.
• Versatility: As long as you have a secure internet connection, you can send and receive faxes from anywhere. The cloud servers allow your employees to fax from their work or home computers, tablets or smartphones. There’s no need to access a physical fax unit or wait for each document to go through individually.
• Internet service: Every company uses internet services. As the need and desire for integration increases, the cloud is becoming a more popular tool. With the development of Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) and Fax over Internet Protocol (FoIP), cloud-based services have nearly eliminated the need for telephone lines, consolidating all communication functions to online dashboards and off-premise centers. Cloud fax services are no different, integrating your faxing capabilities with your online software and workflow.

How Online Faxing Cuts Costs

Beyond all the benefits online faxing provides your employees and your company as a whole, migrating to cloud-based services can also help you significantly cut costs. And the savings begin as soon as you switch. By creating a less expensive faxing system for your employees, you’ll boost your budget and promote productivity, regardless of the industry you serve.

Here are several reasons why using cloud services is a fax cost-saver:

Hardware

With traditional faxing, you need specific hardware to support your document transmissions. To send or receive faxes, you need to be near the equipment, and to send information immediately, you have to make sure no one else is using the device at the same time.

With online faxing, you won’t need to rely on hardware at all. Cloud services move all of the physical elements off premises, meaning there’s no line to send a fax, and you don’t need to commit storage space to legacy units. You’ll save in several ways by moving off-premises, including creating more usable space, reducing your electricity usage and avoiding the need for costly repairs or IT department fixes.

Maintenance

Speaking of your IT department, using cloud-based faxing means they won’t have to spend their time on maintenance. In traditional systems where hardware is necessarily internal, your team is responsible for any repairs, replacements, software upgrades and bug fixes. More severe issues can cause costly downtime and prevent your employees from getting their work done. You also have to factor any replacement parts and labor into your budget.

When you migrate to online faxing, your IT team no longer has to provide regular maintenance or be responsible for repairs. The service provider you partner with takes on those responsibilities. They ensure that if any issues arise, they deal with them quickly and effectively. With no need to maintain legacy units, you can save money on hardware, IT costs and the risk for downtime.

Supplies

Office supplies can rack up significant costs when you’re using them regularly. Traditional faxing requires you to order enough paper and toner to support the number of faxes you send. If your employees collectively send a large number of faxes per day, your fax expenses can use a large portion of your supply budget.

Since e-fax services allow you to move all hardware off-premises, you can cut down on the supplies you order each month, significantly decreasing your spending.

Services

Consolidating your faxing to your existing online service allows you to send and receive faxes through your high-speed internet, removing the need for a separate telephone carrier or line plan. Faxing through the traditional method requires you to pay for a telephone line, and if you don’t already have one or send a large number of faxes, you’ll often need an independent line for the fax alone. Without a separate plan for your phone line, faxing can interrupt or affect the quality of calls.

This extra plan can drive up your expenses. An individual telephone fax-only line can cost your company hundreds of dollars per year on average, without the addition of any long distance charges.

Since cloud services operate solely online, you can use your current high-speed internet service. You may also have versatile payment options depending on how often your company sends faxes.

Power

When it comes to saving costs, reducing your electricity bill will both decrease your expenses and do the planet a favor. Legacy fax systems typically use a significant amount of electricity each day, as you have to leave them running to accept calls and receive documents. While they sit in standby mode, they use energy and drive your bill higher. If your employees send and receive a large number of faxes daily, it can raise your electricity bill significantly.

Cloud-based faxing helps you decrease your electricity bill and bring your power usage down, reducing your company’s carbon footprint. By moving your systems off-premises and relying on your high-speed internet services rather than a telephone line and internal hardware, you’ll cut a portion of your electricity costs.

Also, when your systems are directly connected to your office’s power, your units are susceptible to any outages or weather interference your building experiences. If your faxing is on-premises, this can mean an inability to send and receive documents until the outage is resolved. With cloud services, your employees can continue conducting business off-site through laptops, home computers or any other smart device with an internet connection.

Why Choose Softlinx?

When it comes to choosing a cloud fax service provider, it’s essential to partner with a company that has your business’s best interests in mind. Softlinx ReplixFax is an excellent way to migrate to cloud faxing while reducing your fax costs significantly.

1. Easy Migration

With Softlinx, electronic fax filing is easy and fast, allowing you to get back to work and start saving in no time. Our customer support will provide your company with same day service, shifting your system from on-premises faxing to a virtual cloud server with no delay.

Softlinx also has a variety of plans to suit every need and budget. We let you decide whether you want to pay as a monthly or annual subscription and flexible plans to allow for shifts in faxing volume.

2. Straightforward User Interface

Softlinx’s services include a full suite of electronic fax filing tools, all of which integrate into your current systems with ease. With our full suite, you can receive and send faxes through a multitude of mediums, including PC and mobile web interfaces, email providers and Windows applications. There’s virtually no learning curve, and with minimal training needs from your staff, you’ll be able to shift entirely to cloud faxing quickly.

Our fax services also include an easy-to-use web portal, which allows you to manage users and conduct internal user-related administrative tasks, while we take care of the system-related administration efforts.

3. Powerful and Secure Systems

For companies that need to meet specific data regulations, secure faxing is essential. Softlinx Enterprise Cloud Fax Service is compliant with government and industry regulations, including HIPAA and PCI-DSS. When you send documents through our secure servers, we secure the information throughout the transmission process and host it in a reliable data center using AES-256 bit encryption standards and continual virus scanning.

While traditional faxing may present a significant amount of downtime or force your employees to wait for service availability, our systems are consistently up and running, ready to take on any amount of transmissions. Our cloud infrastructure supports far more than the traditional fax systems, providing you with continued service availability and limited disruption.

4. Advanced Customer Support

If you have any service issues or questions, response time makes all the difference. With fast responses and real-time performance monitoring, Softlinx ensures your systems are running smoothly, and our service infrastructure is error-free. If we detect any complications, our servers send out an immediate notification, allowing our team to take care of the issue fast and providing maximum uptime and availability.

At Softlinx, we also offer 24/7 technical customer support to handle your problems as soon as they arise. You can get in touch with our support team by way of email, phone and web conferencing at any time, whichever medium best suits your needs.

Upgrade to Online Cloud Faxing With Softlinx

The future of fax is cloud-based. Migrating to an electronic fax filing solution will bring your company to a new level of communication, and Softlinx is here to help you make the change. With our versatile, competitive and comprehensive systems, your employees will see higher levels of productivity with almost no learning period. Meanwhile, you’ll benefit from lower costs, increased uptime and data security.

Start your transition today with Softlinx — fill out our form for a free quote or contact us with any questions.

If you’re like most businesses, your organization relies heavily on emails to exchange information with colleagues, patients and other healthcare organizations. And with the proliferation of devices, email isn’t just accessed on computers anymore, but also on smartphones, tablets and even watches.

Is My Email Secure?

While all of this can be highly convenient, it also makes email a prime target for hackers and other cyber-criminals who want access to your data and systems. Knowing all of this, it’s only logical if you’re asking the question, “Is my email secure?”

Of course, if you have any suspicion whatsoever that your email might be compromised, you need to take action right away. The first thing you need to do is change your password. After that, you should run a full-system anti-virus scan on all the devices you’ve used to access that email. A good anti-virus or malware program will automatically quarantine any threats for you. Once any threats have been quarantined, you should send out a warning email to your contacts, since their email accounts might have been compromised too. And if you’re not 100 percent sure you have been able to contain the threat, you’re best advised to contact a cybersecurity specialist.

How to Keep Your Business’s Emails Secure

To answer the question of how to keep your business’s email secure, there are two factors to consider: physical access and online — or virtual — access. Let’s take a closer look at each:

Physical Access

Physical access is an often-overlooked issue when it comes to email security. Malicious insiders — people such as employees, patients and providers who are looking to exploit your organization’s data or gain access to organizations you do business with — will often try to gain access to your email. If your computers or devices are left unattended and unsecured, they’re easy prey. Here’s what you can do about it:

• Restrict access to your organization’s computers, especially those that store sensitive data: For example, you should keep computers that store patient data in an area that can only be accessed by staff, in order to be HIPAA-compliant. Make sure this area is locked when your facility isn’t open. Moreover, adjust each computer’s settings so it requires a password to start up or come out of sleep mode and require your staff to log out of their email accounts when they’re not at their workstations. This makes it more challenging for unauthorized users to gain access to your organization’s email accounts.
• Establish a security protocol for your staff’s devices if they use them to access their work email accounts: Just like with desktop computers, make sure all mobile devices require a password to get past the lock screen. In addition, adjust the settings on the devices so they can be locked remotely if they’re lost or stolen. This can go a long way in helping to keep cybercriminals out of your organization’s email.

Online Access

When it comes to how to secure email, online access is a major concern. After all, it’s often difficult to know your email has been compromised and a breach has occurred as a result — in which case it’s often too late to contain the damage. That’s why you need a robust security plan for your organization’s emails. Here’s what you need to know:

• Make sure SSL (Secure Socket Layer) is enabled on desktop and mobile devices: If you’re using webmail, make sure the URL begins with “https” instead of “http.” If this is the case, the browser is secure.
• Use encryption to send and receive emails: This means the email can only be read by the sender and recipient of the email. For other people viewing it, it will look like a scrambled message. Some email providers like Google automatically encrypt all messages, but with other services like Microsoft’s Outlook, you have to choose to encrypt messages in the Trust Center Settings. On a smartphone, you can do this in the phone’s settings.
• Educate your employees about best practices for email security: Require strong passwords that are changed on a regular basis. Employees should also know not to share their login credentials with others or keep them on a note by their computer. When you consider that one in every 131 emails now contains malware — malicious code that compromises your computer or device so hackers can gain access to your data — it’s clear that raising awareness about phishing and other tactics can greatly help in the effort to keep your email secure. Phishing is a cybercrime tactic that involves sending emails that look legitimate but contain links to malicious websites or attachments. If the user clicks the link or downloads the attachment, malware is installed on the computer or device and hackers can gain access. For this reason, teach your employees to never click on links or download attachments from untrusted sources.
• Use cloud faxing services to keep email attachments secure: A reliable cloud-based fax service such as ReplixFax from Softlinx offers a secure, encrypted and HIPAA-compliant way to send and receive sensitive data such as patient files and other information.

Email Security: An Ongoing Endeavor

Cybercriminals are becoming ever more sophisticated and they’re finding more and more ways to target health organizations of all sizes. For this reason, it’s critical that you stay abreast of developments in the cybersecurity space or work with service providers who can do this for you, so you can concentrate on your core business objectives.

Say “goodbye” to risky email attachments. To learn more about converting to HIPAA-compliant cloud-based fax services, fill out our contact form or call (800) 899-7724. Our experts are standing by to schedule a live demo and answer any questions you might have about how your organization can benefit from cloud-based fax services.