Vendors describe the same service with four or five names. A HIPAA compliant internet fax, a HIPAA compliant web fax, a HIPAA compliant virtual fax and a HIPAA compliant digital fax are each an account on a vendor's servers that sends and receives pages through a web page, an email address or an app, with no phone line and no machine at the practice. The names are marketing; the obligations are the same for all of them. This page explains what the words mean, why they are interchangeable, and which figures in the Fax Line Index decide between the services that use them.
Why one product has five names
Internet fax was the name the first services used when the alternative was a machine on a phone line. Web fax emphasised the browser interface, virtual fax the absence of hardware, digital fax the PDF that arrives instead of paper, and cloud fax the vendor's storage. Each name was coined by a vendor trying to own a search, and each still turns up in a buyer's query. What the practice manager needs to know is that every one of them is a hosted service in which the vendor holds a copy of each page, which is exactly the fact that brings HIPAA into the purchase. If the product stores protected health information, the vendor is a business associate whatever it calls itself.
The HIPAA internet fax rules, in the buyer's terms
The rules do not name fax. They require a covered entity to have a written agreement with any vendor that handles protected health information on its behalf, to limit access to the minimum necessary, to keep records of who accessed what, and to be able to account for disclosures. Applied to an internet fax account that means a signed BAA, per-user logins rather than one shared password, an access log the practice can export, encryption of the stored copy, and a retention setting the practice controls. A vendor that offers all of that on its entry plan is rarer than the marketing suggests, which is why the index reads each vendor's page for the BAA statement and records the plan it appears on.
Which figures decide between them
Once the BAA is established the comparison is arithmetic. Documo prints $25 a month billed annually for 300 pages with a $0.15 overage per additional page. iFax prints Basic at $12.49 a month with 200 pages. Fax.Plus prints Basic at $6.99 a month, $83.99 billed annually, with 200 pages and $0.10 per extra page. WestFax prints $14.99 a month billed monthly for 500 pages with a 3¢ overage and a signed BAA on every plan. A practice receiving referrals all day will find the 500-page plan cheaper than the $6.99 one by the second week of the month; a solo clinician sending a few forms a week will not. The index shows the three figures side by side so that sum can be done before signing.
Questions people ask about hipaa compliant internet fax
Is virtual fax different from cloud fax?
No. Both mean the vendor stores and routes pages on its servers. The name a vendor uses says nothing about compliance; the BAA statement and the plan it appears on do.
Do I need a fax number for internet fax?
To receive, yes, and every plan in the HIPAA class includes at least one number. Sending alone can be done without one, but a practice almost always needs to receive.
Can a web fax be used from a phone?
Every vendor in the class offers an app or a mobile web page, so a clinician can send a photographed form from a phone. The stored copy still lives on the vendor's servers under the same BAA.