Electronic fax is the term insurers, hospitals and state agencies use in their own documents for a fax that arrives as a file rather than paper, and it is the phrase a practice manager is most likely to be told to look for. A HIPAA compliant electronic fax is one where the vendor has accepted business associate obligations for the plan the practice buys, encrypts what it stores, and gives the practice control over access and retention. This page separates what the term means from what the vendor pages promise, and points at the figures that decide the purchase.
What an electronic fax actually is
When a referring office sends a fax to the practice's number, the vendor's equipment answers the call, receives the pages as image data, and converts them into a PDF held in the practice's account. Nothing is printed. The practice reads it in a browser, an app, or as a notification to a mailbox. Sending works in reverse: a PDF uploaded to the account is transmitted to the receiving machine or service as a normal fax call. The practice never touches a phone line; the vendor's servers do. That server copy is the whole reason the words electronic fax and HIPAA appear in the same sentence, because the vendor now holds patient information on the practice's behalf.
The three things that make it compliant
First, the written agreement: a business associate agreement signed for the plan in use, not offered only on an enterprise tier. Second, the safeguards on the stored copy: encryption, per-user access, an audit log, and retention the practice sets. Third, the delivery path: an electronic fax forwarded as a plain email attachment to an unprotected mailbox undoes the first two, so the vendor should offer a secure link or encrypted notification instead. The Fax Line Index reads each vendor's pricing page for the first item and records it verbatim: WestFax prints a signed BAA on every plan, and eFax's Business plan card prints HIPAA compliance with a Business Associate Agreement. Where a vendor's page says nothing the index records nothing, and the practice should ask before paying.
The plans in the HIPAA class, by printed price
Fax.Plus prints Basic at $6.99 a month with 200 pages and $0.10 per extra page. CocoFax prints Lite at $9.99 a month with 60 pages and $0.20 per additional page. iFax prints Basic at $12.49 a month with 200 pages. WestFax prints $14.99 a month billed monthly for 500 pages with a 3¢ overage. Documo prints $25 a month billed annually for 300 pages with $0.15 per additional page. Those five figures, read on the vendors' own pages and dated in the index, are the comparison. A practice that knows its monthly page count can pick the plan whose allowance covers it and treat the overage as the tie-breaker.
Questions people ask about hipaa compliant electronic fax
Is electronic fax the same as efax?
Electronic fax is the generic term; eFax is a vendor whose name became a common noun. When a form asks for an electronic fax it means any service that delivers pages as a file.
Do state agencies accept electronic faxes?
They receive them as ordinary faxes; the sending side's technology is invisible to the receiving machine. What they may require is that the sender's service be HIPAA compliant, which is the BAA question again.
Can I keep my existing fax number?
Most vendors port an existing number into the account. WestFax prints a $20 one-time fee per number to port an existing fax number; the porting guide on this site covers the steps.