TMCnews Featured Article

Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) compliance is a serious matter when it comes to how and when healthcare offices transmit patient data. The goal of HIPAA is to simplify the administrative processes of the healthcare system and to protect patients’ privacy. Information security considerations are involved throughout the guidelines and play a major role in the Privacy Rule of HIPAA compliance. Sending fax documents with patient data can be tricky business when it comes to conforming to these standards, and that is when IP fax can be beneficial.

The healthcare industry is rife with documents. Under HIPAA, civil penalties can be pretty harsh. Privacy breaches can extend to $25,000 and criminal penalties for misuse of information can reach as high as $250,000 and a 10-year prison term.

Offices can use an IP fax service, which offers encryption security. The user encrypts the file by using the service's proprietary software, and sends the encrypted file and the recipient's fax number to the service. The service decrypts the file and sends it to the recipient as a traditional fax.  An incoming fax, meanwhile, is initially delivered to the service, which encrypts the fax and sends it to the recipient as an email attachment.

Computer fax servers and hosted cloud systems are superior to stand-alone fax machines for security, user efficiency, inbound fax routing, auditing, connections to health IT systems and process workflows.

With IP fax, there is no more paper trail and no risk of sensitive patient data falling into the wrong hands. Fax and SMS communications are saved in digital format as an email, which can be safely stored using technological measures.

Such services, like that from Sagecomm’s XMediusFAX, help healthcare offices meet HIPAA standards, providing reasonable safeguards against incidental disclosure of private information and securely exchanging confidential information with third-party business partners.