Faxes, HIPAA and PHI – Can They Coexist?

HIPAA’s Safeguard Principle states: Individually identifiable health information (PHI) should be protected with reasonable administrative, technical, and physical safeguards to ensure its confidentiality, integrity, and availability and to prevent unauthorized or inappropriate access, use, or disclosure.

In spite of the HIPAA compliance issues, a majority of the diagnostic centers continue to depend heavily on faxing to communicate results to ordering physicians.

Beyond compliance issues, a fax is not really a very useful communications tool — you essentially get a printout or an image and not an electronic document that can be efficiently used in multiple ways.  This is not good for productivity or for meeting HIPAA security standards.

There is no easy way to secure a “regular” fax transmission unless both parties are setup with special encrypting fax machines or other special services. Few organizations have such tools. They are expensive, and to be useful, everyone must have compatible machines.

You can’t email PHI via an unsecured email system, why continue to use an unsecured fax machine?

How can healthcare organizations succeed in securely delivering results, without adding unreasonable expense? The answer is: by utilizing secure, digital technology solutions that provide interoperability and added benefits to both sender and receiver. This kind of technology solution securely connects the dots between patients, healthcare providers and referral centers, while also improving workflows.

In addition to improving security of communications, integration with the EMR and powerful built-in productivity tools can streamline workflows across the enterprise. By selecting a secure digital communication solution, like those offered by DigitalOne, healthcare organizations have the freedom to communicate over multiple devices, such as mobile phones, tablets, laptops or desktop computers.

Adopting a secure, standards-based interoperability communication solution is one important way that healthcare organizations can provide coordinated and seamless patient care, while improving quality and lowering costs.