Healthcare is the industry that kept fax alive. Referrals, prior authorisations, prescription requests, lab results and records transfers still move by fax because every practice, hospital, pharmacy and insurer has a number and none of them share a system. A healthcare fax solution is an online service that receives those pages into an account under a business associate agreement, routes them to the right desk and keeps the record. This page lists the vendors in the Fax Line Index that state HIPAA compliance, their printed prices, and what a records transfer actually takes.
What healthcare fax solutions have to do
Receive around the clock without a paper tray, because a fax that arrives at night must not sit where a cleaner can read it. Route inbound pages by sender or by a keyword to the desk that owns them, so a lab result reaches the clinician and a claim reaches billing. Store every page encrypted with a per-user access log, because the auditor's question after a complaint is who opened it. Deliver to email only as a secure link or under an encrypted mailbox. And accept business associate obligations in writing for the plan the practice buys. Everything else, apps, cover sheet templates, number porting, is convenience. The five items above are the compliance.
The vendors, and what they print
WestFax prints a signed BAA on every plan, including Solo at $14.99 a month billed monthly with 500 pages and a 3¢ overage per extra page. eFax's Business plan card prints HIPAA compliance with a Business Associate Agreement, on an offer starting at $14.99 with 500 pages a month and $0.07 per page over. Documo prints $25 a month billed annually with 300 pages, one number and one user, and $0.15 per additional page. iFax prints Basic at $12.49 with 200 pages. Fax.Plus prints Basic at $6.99 with 200 pages and $0.10 per extra page. CocoFax prints Lite at $9.99 with 60 pages and $0.20 per additional page. A practice's monthly page count against those allowances is the comparison.
How long does it take to fax medical records
A fax call sends roughly a page a minute at the speeds most receiving machines negotiate, and an online service queues the job and dials immediately, so a referral of a few pages is delivered within minutes of being sent and a full chart of a hundred pages takes the better part of two hours of line time, split across calls if the receiving machine drops. The slow part is never the transmission; it is the request. A records release has to be received, verified against the authorisation, pulled from the system and sent, and practices commonly quote days for that. An online service removes the walk to the machine and files the transmission report automatically, which is where the real time goes.
Questions people ask about healthcare fax
Why does healthcare still use fax?
Because every party has a number, the transmission report is accepted as proof, and the regulators tolerated it. Online services keep the report while removing the machine.
Can a hospital fax records to a patient's new doctor?
Yes, with the patient's authorisation on file. The sending office verifies the destination number and keeps the report; the receiving office's service should be under a BAA.
Is a shared fax number in a practice acceptable?
One number is fine; one login is not. Each member of staff should have their own credentials so the access log identifies who opened a patient's pages.