Faxing still has a place within many healthcare organizations, providing an effective way to send and receive protected health information (PHI). However, there’s recently been a shift to cloud-based secure fax services, allowing for improved usability and security of that shared information.

Healthcare providers must choose a fax provider carefully guaranteeing the security of PHI at all times, while also ensuring providers and staff have access to and can operate the system easily. Cloud-based faxing allows users to easily transmit data in a digital format through a secure internet connection using high-level encryption, real-time data transfers, and other capabilities.

Here are some things people in the medical industry need to know about how to choose a secure fax service.

How Online Fax Services Work

“The cloud” is any software or service provided over the internet; a cloud fax service replaces physical fax machine or on-premises fax server with internet-based, outsourced service options. A dedicated phone line or fax machine isn’t necessary with cloud-based faxing, nor does it need an on-premises fax server that requires system maintenance and/or upgrades with internal IT staff involvement.

Instead, cloud faxing takes a digital file and sends it with a special email address that includes the recipient’s fax number, or provides an easy-to-use web interface. The service provider converts uploaded documents into the proper format, encrypts them, and sends them to the recipient. Or, when receiving, the provider converts the document into a format that’s readable and then delivers the fax.

A cloud-fax service offers 100% compliance with HIPAA and other regulations.

How To Choose an Online Fax Service

Follow these steps when choosing an online fax service:

1. Assess your needs.

First, you’ll need to know the realistic volume of faxes that will need to be sent and received. Additionally, prepare a list of fax document workflow and processing requirements so you know ahead of time what the fax service will need to provide.

2. Reach out to vendors.

Start by researching top online fax service providers and reading about their offerings, as well as investigating past and current customer reviews. Reach out to the top vendors for more information.

Ask for representative to explain all included features and how they handle customer service needs, and ensure the product meets your needs. At this time, you can evaluate both their product and customer service.

3. Understand cost and fees.

Hidden fees and unexpected costs can make budgeting difficult, so ask about overall pricing and any other charges you could face throughout the contract.

4. Request a demo.

Most providers offer a free product demonstration or trial period, so take advantage of this. Test the service before you finalize the purchase to see how it works and better understand if it will work for your needs. For example, is it user friendly? Does it provide necessary features and capabilities for managing your faxing and document control needs? Does it integrate with your back-office document workflows? What is the capacity and performance?

You should also ask about additional tools that can integrate with your current technology or other features the service offers (such as custom cover sheets, delivery to network folder, broadcast faxing, preset delivery times, or folder-based faxing).

5. Make sure the secure fax service is HIPAA-compliant.

Ask vendor about whether their product is HIPAA compliant and what features are in place such as:

• Control over access to customer PHI.
• Data encryption during transmission and while at rest in the cloud.
• Cybersecurity insurance coverage.
• Finding and protecting against anticipated cybersecurity threats and information theft.

Ultimately, the service should take steps to guarantee all PHI availability, integrity, and confidentiality.

Additionally, ask the vendor if they can share their Annual SOC 2 Type II audit report and Application Penetration Test report with you. Also ensure they would sign Business Associate Agreement (BAA).

Benefits A HIPAA-Complaint Fax Service Should Have

Cloud faxing, or online faxing, has a variety of benefits including greater flexibility, security, and efficiency. For example, cloud-based fax services:

• Provide secure transmission. Criminals cannot hack into a fax to steal data, and even if it is somehow hacked or intercepted, the third party can’t read it without conversion by an authorized user. Faxes deployed with data encryption can make faxes more reliable and secure, which is essential when sending and receiving PHI.
• Send a secure fax immediately. Data traveling uninterrupted from a fax sender to a recipient is less susceptible to hacking. Cloud faxing sends faxes directly to an individual, and the user who wants access must provide correct credentials. You’ll then receive confirmation that the intended recipient gets the fax.
• Keep costs down. There’s no need to purchase, operate, or maintain a separate fax machine or on-premises fax server, or have a dedicated phone line. You’ll save internal IT staff time because there isn’t an on-premises fax server or network systems. Cloud faxing also reduces paper waste.
• Are easy to use. Managing incoming and outgoing faxes is as simple as having access to a computer or mobile device and internet connection – no other equipment is required. Immediate service activation doesn’t require a long lead time, and user-friendly online tools allow you to send and receive faxes anywhere.

Plus, Softlinx also offers a customer web portal with comprehensive fax administration features, making managing fax users and secure fax activities easy.

Enhance productivity. Using a cloud fax service streamlines healthcare fax workflows and significantly simplifies faxing tasks. This helps staff work more efficiently, eliminating challenges like managing junk faxes or dealing with paperwork, refilling paper or ink, or other maintenance.

Trust Softlinx with Secure HIPAA-Compliant Faxing

Our HIPPA-complaint cloud faxing services and other solutions can help you achieve smarter document-handling protocols while protecting PHI. Request a demo today or call (800) 899-7724.

Data security is critical to the healthcare industry. Employees and providers must protect sensitive patient information and comply with regulations mandated by the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA). Unfortunately, despite continuous efforts to make healthcare institutions and their employees more aware of HIPAA data breach best practices, security breach incidents still occur at alarming rates.

Investigations continue to demonstrate that the most severe HIPAA breaches are often due to wrongdoing by an insider, even unintentionally. More significantly, hacking incidents involving ransomware or malware are still increasing.

As an aid to healthcare organizations, the United States Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) provides online HIPAA Basics For Providers: Privacy, Security and Breach Notification Rules. This information contains clear explanations of the rules, as well as good resources for further education.

Healthcare Data Breach Statistics

Statistics reveal an upward trend in healthcare data breaches in recent decades. The HHS reported over 4,000 healthcare data breaches between 2009 and 2021, resulting in the exposure, loss, theft, or unauthorized disclosure of over 300 million records. Those breaches equated to nearly 95% of the United States’ 2021 population.

In 2018, reported healthcare breaches occurred at a rate of approximately one incident per day. In 2021, breaches happened at an average daily rate of 1.95, nearly doubling from three years prior.

Statistics from 2009 onward reveal that hacking is the leading cause of breaches, although healthcare organizations have become much more effective at combating these attempts in recent years. However, in 2021, 528 hacking incidents occurred, an increase of nearly 100 from the previous year. The number of insider breaches has plateaued at around 147 annual incidents.

The Importance of Data Security

The HHS reports that two HIPAA-covered organizations wrongly shared 6,800 personal health records online, including individuals’ medications and lab results. The organizations were fined $4.8 million and had to agree to take corrective plans of action.

Another example shared is a hospital worker who pleaded guilty to attempting personal gain from illegally obtained protected health information (PHI), and then faced a maximum 10-year prison sentence.

Various personnel with different types of access across multiple organizations encounter sensitive health information daily. Because many people have access to this data, healthcare organizations must carefully evaluate how they handle PHI while ensuring they have the proper compliance protocols established to protect the information.

Today, because healthcare organizations electronically store PHI data on computers, network servers and hand-held devices, these electronic records face increased risk of malicious attacks that can lead to a data breach.

Staying compliant with HIPAA regulations means training employees appropriately, using internal processes geared toward HIPAA compliance, and utilizing sufficient technology to ensure protection. Appropriate internet protocols and effective cybersecurity measures are critical for keeping this information confidential. The moment that a party gains access to this data without the patient’s consent, a HIPAA breach occurs. Even if the sharing of the information was unintentional, it could mean major legal ramifications for the organization.

What Is the HIPAA Security Rule and What Constitutes a HIPAA Breach?

The HIPAA Security Rule entails national standards to protect a patient’s medical records and other health information by setting limits on use of this information without the patient’s authorization. Healthcare organizations primarily use electronic methods to maintain patient records, so these privacy rules have multiple regulatory layers surrounding digital media, including network transmissions and data storage in computers laptops, or mobile devices.

If an unauthorized party compromises, accesses or steals medical information in any of these locations, it becomes a HIPAA breach that calls for specific responses and reporting, Unless the affected healthcare organization can prove that the unlawful access did not compromise a patient’s protected health information, unauthorized access is considered a breach.

What to Do When Your HIPAA Data Has Been Breached

It’s crucial for healthcare organizations and their business associates to respond rapidly and appropriately to a potential HIPAA breach. Some of the immediate actions for minimizing liability and mitigating a violation include:

1. Stop the breach. Immediately terminate access to PHI to help reduce a breach’s effects.
2. Contact the privacy officer. Each covered organization must have a privacy officer with experience and training to investigate and respond to a breach appropriately. Reporting deadlines typically begin when anyone in the organization first discovers the violation, so it should be reported as soon as possible. The privacy officer will also ensure all the proper steps are taken.
3. Mitigate the impact. HIPAA requires that a covered entity mitigate a breach’s harmful consequences to every possible extent. These efforts could include:

• • Retrieving, deleting, or destroying the disclosed PHI.
  • Wiping an electronic device of PHI.
  • Warning the responsible party of the penalties of the breach and attempt to obtain assurances they have not and do not plan to use the PHI.

4. Document everything. Compiling all details of the breach is critical to the investigation, including the type and amount of PHI accessed, used, or disclosed, why the parties had access to it, what it was used for, and steps taken to mitigate the impact. Investigators must also ensure no redisclosure.
5. Correct the breach. An organization can avoid HIPAA penalties if it does not commit the violation willingly and corrects the problem within 30 days. The organization can help remedy the breach by:

• • Changing their privacy or access procedures.
  • Implementing new preventive measures.
  • Modifying existing policies.
  • Training employees on security measures.

6. Determine whether the breach requires reporting to the HHS. Unless the covered entity establishes a low probability that the information was compromised, the unauthorized disclosure or impermissible use of PHI is classified as a breach. Exceptions include unintentional acquisition and inadvertent disclosure of the PHI. The HHS’s Definition of a Breach outlines factors involved in the risk assessment.
7. Report the breach, if required. If the violation requires reporting under the notification rule, the organization or business associate must compile all necessary reports. Failure to report the breach can indicate possible willful neglect, triggering mandatory penalties for the violation. Organizations must also notify the affected individual, HHA Secretary, and media (in some cases).

HIPAA Breach Notification Rules and Requirements

Following a HIPAA breach, the HIPAA Breach Notification Rule requires HIPAA-covered organizations and their associates to notify these patients within 60 days of discovering unlawful access. Others that must be notified include:

• Prominent media outlets serving the area if a breach affects more than 500 people in a state or jurisdiction.
• The Secretary of Health and Human Services via a report on the HHS website.

Preventing Future Breaches

The best way to avoid to HIPAA breaches is by taking preventative measures rather than responding after the fact. Organizations should:

• Implement effective policies and technical safeguards, and continuously monitor them.
• Train and retrain staff members on HIPAA obligations and the consequences of a potential breach.
• Purchase suitable privacy insurance to help cover the fines if a breach does occur.
• Include indemnifications and other provisions in business associate agreements are also beneficial.

However, leveraging experiences from past breaches to improve performance is instrumental in preventing future incidents.

In addition, a HIPAA-compliant fax service, like the cloud faxing services offered by Softlinx, can fortify a provider’s methods of protecting private patient information and other sensitive data.

Softlinx Helps Those Looking to Prevent a Future Data Breach

Moving forward from any data breach usually means establishing smarter document-handling protocols. Any good data management system must also allow your business to grow and remain responsive to your clients’ needs. Our HIPAA-compliant fax services and other solutions can help you achieve these objectives.

Connect with us online or call (800) 899-7724 today to learn more about Softlinx HIPAA compliant cloud faxing and how it can benefit your organization.

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.

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.

What Are the Benefits of HIPAA-Compliant Cloud Fax Services?

 

There are many advantages to incorporating a HIPAA-compliant, cloud-based fax service into your healthcare operations. Aside from the daily ease of more straightforward business processes, these faxing systems help bring peace of mind that your fax communications and activities are on-par with the healthcare industry’s strict governance.

Healthcare administrators and practitioners have enough on their plates without the headache of a complex fax system. When you must continually spend time checking and double checking fax information, shoring up its security, updating internal policies and training on the latest software with the newest compliance features, you are directly inhibiting one of the most perfunctory aspects of healthcare administration.

You can make your faxing and online-document deliveries streamlined and secure through a cloud fax service — all while taking advantage of a host of additional benefits, such as these four.

1. Enhanced Compliance & Patient Confidentiality

Adhering to HIPAA’s stringent industry rules is a leading concern for healthcare institutions and their partners. However, ensuring your practices are HIPAA compliant takes time, money and continual resources, both on the human and technical side.

With a secure, cloud-based fax delivery system, you directly streamline nearly all aspects of medical document communications that are still critically used today. This not only means quicker and more efficient services within your office, but the risk of in-compliance is off your shoulders — unlike when you have manual faxing or on-site fax servers.

The following items bolster this enhanced compliance:

• Business Associate Agreements (BAA): BAAs serve as chains of trust for all levels of healthcare providers, vendors and subcontractors. According to HIPAA, anyone with access or potential access to PHI must sign and adhere to these contracts. ReplixFax has built-in user logs, notifications and authorized access controls that complement BAAs and PHI-handling best practices, ultimately meeting HIPAA compliance.

• HIPAA-Audited Data Center: Your faxing service platform is managed and hosted at an SSAE-16 audited data center. This means you have a top-of-the-line facility, computer systems and data-management team regularly scrutinized under HIPAA’s evolving requirements, year to year.
• Compliance Management Partners: The cloud-based nature of the system means you have a 24/7 resource to support your critical fax data. This partner is just as responsible for its management and must be as well-versed in HIPAA regulations as you are, reinforcing your holistic risk-management practices.

2. Heightened Data Security

Some of HIPAA’s strongest regulations center on the safeguards and protection of PHI. Considering healthcare is one of the most-hacked industries today, its vast swaths of stored medical history and sensitive data mean healthcare service organizations cannot rest on their laurels. Institutions must continually be vigilant, monitoring their networks, setting up cyber-security defenses and partnering with vendors to help mitigate today’s and tomorrow’s risks.

It’s no easy task, but a comprehensive HIPAA-compliant fax service system can help you accomplish this with the following features:

• Designated Sign-In: Anyone sending a fax or working with system data must first sign into their individual, password-protected account.

• Fax Encryption: While at rest within the cloud-storage system, all faxes, files and their inputted protected health information (PHI) sit encrypted through a AES 256-bit encryption method, one of the most advanced in the industry.

• Fax Data Recovery: The loss of patient data will not only interrupt a healthcare organization’s or vendor’s operations — it puts real people at risk. Your reputation sits at stake without a routine data-backup system in place to recover PHI and faxes in the event of an emergency or cyber threat.

• Automatic Notifications: You can set up notifications to alert both senders and receivers when a fax has been initiated. This means sharper, real-time communication and better fax management, with fewer instances of sensitive data sitting in a queue.
• Authorized Access: You can set up your cloud-based fax API with authorized-only access, which gives system log-ins only to a select few individuals. This directly reduces the chance of unauthorized data access, viewing, transferring and overall in-compliant handling.

3. Streamlined Auditing

Another aspect of HIPAA compliance concerns the thorough and secure documentation of information, transactions and procedures. HIPAA-compliant faxing is no different, and agencies that do not have proper audit trails in place risk severe fines and repercussions if they are found to be incompliant.

The sheer amount of faxes and fax-related communications procured in the healthcare industry necessitates a complete, streamlined auditing system that logs and accounts for every piece of correspondence. With a cloud-based fax API system, you get the following:

• Complete Data Log: The fax API system maintains a record of all file activities, including additions, deletions, retrievals, transfers and data search queries. This is square one in a straightforward audit trail protocol for yourself or your medical clients.

• User Activity Log: The system registers all user activity, which you can then search and catalog using current administrative tools or other integrated web services APIs.

• Fax Trails: The system logs every incoming and outgoing fax, meaning you have one central repository for fax audit trails. Any audit request or compliance check has a straightforward accountability system in place.

• Annual SOC2 Reports: This is a complete report on the data center hosting your PHI, detailing its service environment, practices, updates and procedures, so you can rest assured your data management remains HIPAA-compliant.

• HIPAA-Compliant Fax Deletion: The system allows for industry-standard electronic file deletion, simplifying another compliance headache for many healthcare institutions or hosting vendors.

4. Simpler Software Integration

You can harmonize your’s or your client’s current computer programs and applications through tailored Web Service APIs. This software integration minimizes disruptions to your business operations, reduces employee training and allows operations to remain active. Plus, with more streamlined software suites, you can take care of tasks like converting HIPAA-compliant fax to emails or HIPAA-compliant link sharing in a few simple clicks.

Some other features of this integration include:

• Safe Fax Delivery: Send faxes using safer, security-enhanced delivery channels, either via email-over-TLS or Web-over-secure links.The sheer amount of faxes and fax-related communications procured in the healthcare industry necessitates a complete, streamlined auditing system that logs and accounts for every piece of correspondence. With a cloud-based fax API system, you get the following

• Safe Communications Portal: All communications enacted through the Web Service API come as encrypted links using premier Secure Sockets Layering (SSL) protocol.

• Fax Data Corrections: Reduce the likelihood of human error and improper data inputs. Replix Healthcare Fax can pull fax numbers and other simple data from your existing fax directories, including popular systems like LDAP, Microsoft Active Directory and IBM Domino Address Books.

• Complementary Administrative Tools: You can incorporate other administrative and fax-management tasks into Replix Healthcare Fax through Web Service API.

What Can Your Healthcare Organization Accomplish With HIPAA-Compliant Fax Services and Support?

It’s not just about saving time and money. A complete, HIPAA-compliant fax solution for your medical or healthcare organization alleviates the oversight and energy it takes to remain in compliance, which is square one for those in the industry.

These cloud-based faxing programs also put people first — from your office administrators to your patients themselves. As concerns over data privacy and usage only grow more pressing, you can rest assured your organization is taking every possible measure to secure medical information and meet the public’s heightened demands.

A Replix® HIPAA-compliant fax solution from Softlinx is your partner in doing so. Schedule a free live software demo today at (800) 899-7724, email our support specialists, request a quote online or fill out our contact form.

Is online fax secure? That is one of the most frequently asked questions among people who have yet to find a secure fax service. If you’re still unsure about online faxing, this guide will answer everything you need to know about using an online fax service.

What Is Secure Fax?

A secure fax is a digital document that is encrypted for security over fax servers. A secure fax cannot be intercepted, stolen or accessed by unauthorized third parties. On a secure fax, the numbers of both the sender and the recipient are hidden from view to protect both identities. Secure faxes are protected with strong encryption and impossible to read until they arrive in the hands of recipients.

Many of today’s businesses are employing cloud fax service companies to safely fax sensitive document with utmost confidentiality.

How to Send a Secure Fax

When you need to send documents in as safe a format as possible, your best option is to use a secure cloud fax service. Online secure fax services keep documents safe from interception while in transit between senders and receivers as well as while at rest in the cloud. Compared to traditional faxing methods, digital faxing offers the following benefits:

1. Encrypted Systems

Correspondence via digital fax is done over an encrypted system that is far safer than Ethernet, WiFi or phone lines. This makes digital fax a far safer and more secure medium of communication than either traditional fax or email, which both occur over lines that could easily be hacked or intercepted by a third party.

Traditional faxing is done over phone lines, rendering such documents vulnerable in situations where a line has been bugged by an information thief. If, for example, your company is infiltrated by someone who intends to steal information and pass it onto a third party, that individual could possibly bug your phone lines and make it possible for the competing entity to receive incoming and outgoing fax messages.

When matters of safety are taken into consideration, email correspondence is also trumped by the digital faxing option. If someone sends a document to your email inbox, that document is passed through Ethernet cords that are similar in nature to phone lines. Moreover, emails are vulnerable to hackers and data breaches. In the medium of digital fax correspondence, each exchange is protected by layers of security that are impossible to penetrate with phone bugs and email phishing tactics.

2. Flexibility

With digital faxes, you can choose to receive the documents on an email server or a fax machine. Furthermore digital fax servers can also deliver your faxes into secure network folders or directly into your business applications. As such, the faxing medium offers a range of choices that email itself simply lacks. If the documents in question are of a sensitive nature, you would definitely want to restrict the exchanges to faxing devices. This, of course, would be the option to take if the documents involve signatures, social security numbers or credit card information.

If the documents are benign and contain no sensitive data, you may opt to receive them as emails or faxes. For faxes that merely concern promotions or party invites, you might wish to receive them as email correspondence.

3. Legally Binding Documents

When it comes to legally binding documents, email remains an unacceptable medium. Given the aforementioned problems associated with email, there are too many risks involved with emailing legal documents. For starters, there is no way for a party that requests a signature to verify the authenticity of a signature when it arrives in the form of an email message.

Legal documents are one of the main reasons why fax, both traditional and digital, has remained popular in the face of email and online correspondence. Fax has always been an accepted medium for legally binding documents because the issuing party can verify that the signature is indeed authentic.

If a document is signed in paper form, the authenticity of the signature is obvious due to the handwriting of the signature itself, whether the document is signed in ink and returned via snail mail or returned via fax. If a document is signed electronically on a digital fax form, the signature is verifiable since the document itself can only be processed on the computing device of the intended recipient of the original blank document. Therefore, faxed documents are generally accepted as legally binding, barring those submitted to government agencies.

4. Hack-Proof Documents

Cyber thieves can hack into email servers and leak the private data of targeted parties. Instances like these have collapsed businesses, ruined careers, destroyed reputations and put people at risk. Despite the efforts of email service providers, who have worked with anti-malware developers to block the intrusions of data thieves, hacking remains a problem for many users. For each new fortification in cybersecurity, hackers up the ante and find new ways to bypass security code.

With faxes, there is no equivalent to the hacking issue because cybercriminals cannot hack into a fax to steal data. You never have to worry about unauthorized foreign parties cracking the code on a fax to access your private info. Simply put, faxes rely on a different type of technology that cannot be intercepted by third parties. Even if an unauthorized party intercepts a fax communication, the thief would not actually be able to steal any data from incoming or outgoing faxes because the data would need to be converted for readability and only the sender or receiver could authorize that task.

5. No Spam

One of the biggest differences between the mediums of fax and email is the flow of spam, a problem solely confined to the email medium. Since the rise of email back in the mid-1990s, the word

 “spam” has been common parlance among even the most entry-level Internet users. You will inevitably receive spam the moment you give an email address to anyone outside your closest personal confidants.

Thankfully, today’s most broadly used email servers are equipped with functions that filter spam into separate folders, allowing users to avoid the majority of unwanted messages. Still, the very presence of spam as an ongoing problem — one that everyone with an email address has had to deal with at some time or another — points to the very real security issues of email as a medium. The fact that you can end up on spam lists simply for listing your email address on social media, even in the most limited capacity, points to the real and clear danger of exchanging sensitive data through email correspondence.

In the medium of fax correspondence, there is no equivalent to spam. Even if your fax number falls into the hands of a bulk-list hard seller, it is illegal to send junk faxes because doing so uses up the toner and paper of parties at the receiving end. Therefore, digital and traditional fax correspondence is free of the plague of spam or anything of a similar nature.

6. No Blocking

With email, problems can arise with the blocking features that are generally designed to protect users. The blocking features are intended to filter out spam and messages with dangerous attachments. However, various other messages can get scooped into blocking filters due to characteristics that are not always easy to pinpoint. For example, you might send an important business email to a potential client or partner, only for that message to end up in the recipient’s spam folder. While the individual might have enacted steep, indiscriminate filter functions, the problem could easily be down to the wording of the email header.

When important emails end up in other people’s spam filters despite your own best intentions, you could end up missing out on various opportunities. This is one of the other main reasons why faxes are better than email when it comes to business correspondence.

With faxes, there is no such thing as a blocking function because faxing has no equivalent to spam. In the majority of cases, faxes are anticipated and warmly received on the other end. Even when a fax is not expected in advance, it will generally be received well due to the pre-established relations between the two parties. After all, you are unlikely to receive outright junk faxes because the practice is illegal. If someone sends you a fax, it would probably be for something that you already anticipate signing and returning or responding to in some other positive way.

7. Instant Confirmation

One of the biggest advantages of fax correspondence is that you can verify whether the message has been received at the other end. With traditional fax, you are notified the moment the fax is either auto-printed or placed in a queue at the receiving end.

When you send a document via fax, you get the instant assurance that your message or document was received on the other end, regardless of whether the recipient is there to view it at the time in question. In that regard, you can feel a sense of accomplishment when you send a fax because you will have completed your end of the exchange, regardless of whether the other party responds.

Is Faxing Documents Secure?

When you use an online fax service, the following practices can help your organization keep security tight:

• Make sure that your fax service provider uses strong encryption to keep your documents protected and secure while they are in transmission or at rest in the cloud.
• If you forward a fax that contains portions of information deemed confidential by the original sender, make sure to crop the info in question before you forward the fax to the third party.
• Before sending a fax, contact the intended recipient to verify they will be available to receive the fax. This step is especially crucial if the fax communication involves a deadline or anything that requires prompt action at the other end.
• If a fax concerns matters of high confidentiality, refrain from sharing said fax with organizations that engage in weak confidentiality practices.
• Enact a retention policy within your organization and among partnered entities to ensure that faxed communications via email, both sent and received, are not retained beyond their intended expiration dates.
• Fax services typically retain logs of outgoing and incoming communications. It is, therefore, crucial to read and understand the privacy protections and retention policies of a service provider.

Cloud-based fax services are safe and efficient as long as the medium is used with the utmost responsibility.

Is Using Email Safer Than Sending Faxes? 

Email has been around since the 1980s and remains popular for many reasons. When compared to the fax, email servers provide quality in the following areas:

1. Password Protection

For basic privacy, email is a safe medium for basic correspondence in most situations. Email servers are protected by login and password prompts. These prompts will not grant access if the wrong info is entered into the fields. If you enter the wrong username or password twice in a row, the email server will usually block your IP address. You will then need to verify your identify and reset your information, typically through a secondary email address or possibly via phone verification.

With strict login prompts and security protocols, email is generally a secure medium for the majority of daily communications that do not involve legal documents or sensitive business data. That said, the vulnerable aspects of email have rendered the medium inappropriate on all but the most encrypted servers for communications between elected officials and government personnel.

2. Firewalls

Most of today’s email services protect users with firewall functions. These filter out suspect emails and block the activation of attachments that could be dangerous, such as .exe files. Therefore, today’s email platforms are far safer than the early programs that most people used back in the late ‘90s and the early ‘00s when it was not uncommon for extension files to execute and infect hard drives. These days, such problems are rare on most email servers. In fact, few of today’s younger users have ever had a computer crash or OS infection originate from a corrupt email.

Email is generally viewed unfavorably as a means of communications among serious organizations. This is because of its checkered past. To a large extent, these attitudes are justified. Email servers are not foolproof. Some of the biggest horror stories from yesteryear could still occur in isolated scenarios. As such, businesses, government agencies and other high-security organizations refrain from using email servers for all but the most casual and inconsequential correspondence.

The advent of mobile text messaging, which is commonly practiced among work colleagues, has largely replaced email.

3. Privacy

In many ways, email is one of the most private mediums of communication between people who are not in the same room. While you can talk to someone on a phone, other people nearby might overhear your side of the conversation. You could exchange messages on an online forum or on social media, but all such posts could easily be seen by other people who use those platforms, even if you use high-privacy settings. With email, the only person who sees the message is the user with access to the inbox in question.

In this regard, email correspondence has the advantage over faxing. A fax could potentially be seen by anyone with access to the machine at the receiving end. If you run a busy office space where dozens of people from various departments pass by the fax receptor each hour, no communication sent via conventional fax could really be considered private.

Granted, if you are the only person with access to a particular fax, the privacy risks would be less substantial. However, that gets beyond the intended purpose of faxing, which is generally for two parties to instantly exchange secure and often legally binding documents across great distances.

Basically, faxing has the advantage over email in terms of security. On the other hand, email has the upper hand in terms of privacy. If you need to send sensitive data or a signed document to someone in a different department, building, city, state or country, use fax. If you want to reveal something touchy about your personal life to a close friend afar, use email.

Why You Should Use Fax Instead of Email

In all the debates about fax vs. email security, most people agree that faxing is the better option for documents of a sensitive or highly classified nature. Email lacks the safety of fax for the following reasons:

1. Email Attachments

Emails can come with dangerous attachments. These attachments can infect your computer and possibly spread to other machines linked to the same network. If you work in an office and receive an email purported to be of interest to your business, it could possibly have a virus attached. This virus will execute on your hard drive the moment you open the message.

The scary thing about email attachments is how they are sometimes difficult to spot. Even if you do realize that an email has some type of malware attached, it could be impossible to stop the infection by the time it comes to your attention.

These days, people are largely desensitized to the threat of harmful email attachments. This is because it is often assumed that Windows will detect such problems in advance and suppress them. Therefore, employees are often naive about the potential threat of email viruses. Moreover, certain types of malware are designed to run in the background of a machine and steal info. This can happen unbeknownst to the user of an infected machine.

Faxed documents, by contrast, never pose such a threat because there is no way to attach malware to a fax.

2. Email Hacking

Another major risk of email correspondence is the possibility of third-party hacking. If you and a colleague are discussing confidential business information via email, those messages could be accessed by an unauthorized party and leaked into the wrong hands. It could either be a rival within your company or a competitor looking to harm your business in some way.

When email accounts are hacked, the intrusion is virtually impossible to detect. Most victims of email hacking only learn of the situation the hard way, such as when information is leaked to the Internet. Depending on the sensitivity of the information in question, an email leak could cause a company to unravel.

With secure digital faxing, there is no risk of third-party hacking because the information in transit would merely consist of unreadable code that can only be translated on the machine of the recipient.

3. Phishing

Another major risk of email is the possibility of phishing. Phishing is generally defined by messages from an ostensibly friendly source. These emails contain fetching links. The moment you click one of these links, popup prompts appear on your screen that ask for basic personal info in a misleading but seemingly benign manner. Even though many email users are wise to such gambits in this day and age, many people still fall for this trap. Your company might have a naive employee who takes the bait and unwittingly puts the whole network at risk.

In some cases, programs will open that take over your computer. These programs execute inescapable prompt boxes the moment you open the message. Phishing is basically designed to access vital company data. This may include contact lists, credit card numbers and the passwords of program account holders. In a worst-case scenario, a phishing incident could lead to a data breach of epic proportions. This could cause you to lose customers by the thousands.

Thankfully, phishing is not possible with secure digital faxing.

Secure Fax Service From Softlinx

Secure fax is becoming the most accepted way for B2B communication. If you constantly engage in fax communications to and from your customers and contacts, you should definitely employ the services of a cloud fax service. Contact Softlinx for a demo or get a quote.

Sometimes, we do something a certain way because it’s how we’ve always done it. When it comes to healthcare cloud faxing, our secure fax services have significant benefits over traditional faxing. A few of the good reasons to make the switch:

Reduced Risk of HIPAA Violations

When it comes to maintaining the privacy and security of sensitive healthcare information, our HIPAA compliant fax service offers unparalleled protection. By leveraging this advanced solution, you can significantly reduce the risk of HIPAA violations and safeguard your clients’ confidential records.

With secure cloud-based healthcare fax services, your communications are shielded throughout the entire delivery process. This ensures the same level of security as a traditional phone line-based fax service. However, the advantages go beyond the standard security measures. Instead of relying on physical sheets of paper that can potentially be misplaced or left behind in fax machines, our service ensures that documents are delivered directly to your staff members’ computers.

Consistency with Digital Record Rules

The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) introduced a pivotal requirement for healthcare providers, both public and private, to transition from traditional paper-based records to digitized formats. This transformative mandate aimed to enhance the quality and accessibility of health records. By utilizing a cloud-based fax system, you not only comply with the law but also maintain consistency with digital record rules, streamlining your operations and ensuring seamless adherence to regulatory standards.

When you embrace a cloud-based fax system, you effectively bridge the gap between traditional record-keeping methods and the digital realm. By keeping all of your in-house and patient-supplied records in a secure digital environment, you ensure compliance with the ARRA and other pertinent regulations. This transition to digital records aligns with the overarching objective of improving the quality, accuracy, and accessibility of healthcare information.

Enhanced Team Efficiency

In today’s fast-paced world, traditional faxing methods often prove to be inconvenient and time-consuming for businesses. However, with the introduction of cloud-based healthcare fax services, the process has been significantly streamlined, resulting in improved team efficiency.

Gone are the days of printing out records, physically placing them on a fax machine, dialing the recipient’s number, and patiently waiting for the fax to send. With a cloud-based healthcare fax service, your staff members can now effortlessly send important documents directly from their computers. This eliminates the need to deal with frustrating paper jams or encounter other common issues associated with traditional faxing methods.

The utilization of a healthcare cloud fax system allows your team to seamlessly queue the documents, send them with a simple click, and promptly move on to the next task at hand. By removing the cumbersome steps involved in traditional faxing, valuable time is saved, and team members can focus their energy on more critical responsibilities.

More Complete Records

When we deal with paper records, it is easy for items from a file to get lost. A sheet from a patient’s medical record may be pulled out to be faxed, but may not make it back into the file. Or, it may wind up returned to the wrong patient file. According to a study by PricewaterhouseCoppers, about 7.5% of a business’s documents are misfiled. This can lead to consequences like duplicated immunizations, misdiagnosis of health problems, over prescription of medications and prescribing of incompatible medications. With cloud faxing, the documents never leave your patient’s file. This way, you are more sure that your records are complete and accurate.

Less Paper Waste

When using traditional faxing, how often do you print a document, just to fax and discard it? Businesses in America use 12.1 trillion sheets of paper every year. Nearly half of all trees harvested are used to make paper. Additionally, paper production causes significant water pollution and uses large amounts of fossil fuels.

When you switch your faxing from paper to digital services, you can cut down on the amount of paper used in your office. You’ll reduce your impact on the environment and save money that might otherwise go to the costs associated with storing sent faxes.

Unlock the Benefits of Healthcare Cloud Fax Solutions with Softlinx

Don’t miss out on the countless benefits that cloud faxing can bring to your business. Contact Softlinx today and let us show you how our innovative cloud fax solution can revolutionize your healthcare cloud fax communications. Discover the power of efficiency, security, and cost savings with Softlinx. Schedule your free demo now.