If you don’t work in healthcare, it might surprise you to know that faxing is not only alive, but thriving. While shoulder pads and questionable perms died out in the 1980s, faxing stuck around, especially in sectors that rely on the transfer of sensitive and confidential information, like healthcare.
These days, however, faxing has (mostly) moved to the cloud. Cloud faxing is more similar to email than a traditional fax, which is handy when you’re employing young medical professionals who think faxes are just foxes with a typo.
Let’s look at some of the benefits of cloud faxing services in a medical setting.
What are cloud faxing services?
Also known as internet faxing or email faxing, cloud faxing services offer a way of sending and receiving faxes via the internet, rather than a traditional fax-to-fax setup. No phone lines, no strange beeping noises, just quiet, seamless data transfer, straight from the cloud. This lets healthcare providers quickly and securely send documents among providers, payers and ancillary services.
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Cloud faxing offers encryption and password protection
Security is obviously a number one concern when dealing with sensitive patient information, and cloud faxing is arguably one of the safest means of data transfer. Cloud faxing services offer encryption to protect the transmission of faxed documents, and they usually use secure protocols, like HTTPS, to make sure all data pinging back and forth from the cloud is safe. Cloud faxing also gives users an audit trail, tracking who sent and received faxes, and whether they were successfully delivered.
Cloud faxing services support HIPAA compliance
Healthcare providers are bound by some pretty strict privacy laws, depending on where they operate. The beauty of cloud faxing is that it’s compliant with the vast majority of these laws, giving providers a legal way to send and receive confidential patient data. Most cloud faxing services are compliant with the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) in the United States, thanks to their encryption and password-protection capabilities.
Cloud faxing improves workflow efficiency
By moving traditional faxing to the cloud, healthcare providers can avoid a lot of paper. This leads to more efficient document handling, and better transparency: by receiving faxes electronically, providers can cut down on the number of lost or misplaced documents. Cloud faxing is also great for remote work, allowing employees to send and receive faxes from home.
Lastly, most cloud faxing services offer seamless integration with electronic health records (EHR), which means you can send faxes direct from EHR platforms. This reduces the need for manual data entry (always a big win) and improves general accuracy.
Cloud faxing services mean cost savings
By ditching old-school fax machines, healthcare providers automatically save a lot of money on purchasing, overheads and maintenance. There’s no paper in cloud faxing, so that’s another win for the budget right there. Cloud faxing also doesn’t require any dedicated phone lines, so there are no telecommunication expenses.
Print management for faxing
Even though cloud faxing services have eliminated the need for paper faxing, doctors and medical staff will still need to print patient documents from time to time, either for markups and notes, audits, or possible legal action. The good news is, most cloud faxing services – like eFax Corporate, MetroFax, FaxLogic and RingCentral Fax – come with built-in print management solutions. This makes it easy to send and receive cloud faxes, then print the necessary documents – all with compliant security and audit trails.
If you need some help figuring out which cloud fax service is right for your business, give us a call. We can help set up your network and get you faxing like it’s 1989.
OR, if you already have a faxing service in mind, we have this awesome Knowledge Base article that can help you get started.
Check it out
