Few industries feel the burden of records management quite as acutely as healthcare. A single patient can generate hundreds of pages of records, all of which must be kept organized, accessible and secure. Until recently, healthcare providers had no choice but to file patient records manually, using valuable storage space and wasting countless payroll hours pushing paper rather than providing care. Worse yet, paper documents are easily misplaced, prone to theft, and difficult to track. In healthcare settings in particular, rapid records location and retrieval can be a matter of life and death.
In the United States, government regulations such as HIPAA and HITECH impose strict rules on the handling of protected health information (PHI) and other critical documents. Healthcare providers are eager to comply because these regulations are all designed to improve patient care and privacy, but the high cost of some document delivery solutions can be prohibitive. Still, considering that data security experts at Ponemon Institute estimated an average price tag of $5.5 million per data breach incident last year, finding an affordable way to exchange sensitive documents securely can actually end up saving money.
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Last year, Emory Healthcare in Atlanta, GA announced that 32 of its patients’ records had been discovered in the bust of an identity theft ring. The papers were, perhaps innocently, printed by a hospital employee but somehow made it out of the hospital and into the hands of criminals. Nine of the affected patients reported identity theft, and Emory alerted another 7,200 who were in their care at the time. Paper isn’t always to blame: just last month Emory was the victim of a much broader data breach involving PHI. The health network announced it was unable to locate 10 computer discs containing PHI for more than 300,000 patients treated between 1990 and 2007. Emory now must provide all affected patients with resources to prevent identity theft and may face a loss in patient confidence.
For patient-focused and cost-conscious healthcare organizations, meeting government regulations requires timely, secure and efficient information exchange. Specialized documents such as claims information, patient records, lab reports and admittance records are central to the operations of all healthcare providers, from the smallest clinics to the largest networks. So, how can physicians, nurses, administrators and other healthcare professionals ensure that the proper documentation can be located and delivered to the appropriate recipients quickly and securely? It turns out that an overwhelming number use fax, and one in five use fax as their primary source to deliver PHI.
Fax possesses unique legal properties that make it invaluable to businesses that need to closely track the transfer of records. Because fax communication occurs solely between two participants (the sender and the receiver), and because it travels point-to-point over the telephone grid (PSTN), it is not only reliable, but also traceable and relatively secure. Better yet, fax is globally accessible.
But paper documents—which are still used by many healthcare professionals—are inherently vulnerable to tampering, falling into the wrong hands, or being misplaced. Faxes received at a fax machine in a public area such as a busy emergency room can be seen by anyone who happens to be walking by. In a sense, every time you create a piece of paper, you create a potential information security breach.
Not only are healthcare providers required by law to create and retain a multitude of documents, but they also are bound by respect for the privacy of their customers—the patients.
The solution to this problem again comes from fax, but not the paper faxes you may be thinking of. Massive leaps in fax technology over the last 20 years have led to an increasing adoption of software-based fax servers for secure document transfer.
As hospitals move in greater numbers toward paperless health records management, electronic medical records (EMR) stored and exchanged on a centralized network fax server like OpenText RightFax are replacing file rooms and paper charts. Archiving software like OpenText Alchemy makes document access and management a cinch.
A good network fax solution presents healthcare institutions with a wide range of benefits:
- Cost savings: Less money spent on hardware maintenance (fax machines, fax boards and phone lines) and related supplies (paper, ink, and toner).
- Increased productivity: With network fax, document delivery is automated. Healthcare professionals can send and receive faxes directly from their desktop, allowing them to spend less time at a fax machine and more time caring for patients.
- Broad integrations: A good fax solution will integrate seamlessly with existing applications and devices.
- Consolidation: A fax server provides a single, central hub for all PHI and other EMR. No more shuffling papers in a file room.
- Compliance: The server is easily searchable, and retains an audit trail that records any access to or transmission of a given document. If asked to produce a specific patient record or other file in adherence with HIPAA, compliance is just a click of a button away.
- Scalability: Fax servers can handle enough fax traffic to serve any institution from the smallest private practice to the largest regional health network and capacity can scale at any pace.
- Ubiquity and ease of use: Fax is everywhere and fax is easy. Anyone with a telephone connection can fax. This makes fax ideal for the healthcare industry, where international exchange of records is often necessary.
Solving the paper problem is only the start. With more than twice the reported data breaches of any other industry, (at least 260 million records since 2006), healthcare providers need a secure document delivery solution.
Matthew Brine is the vice president and general manager of the OpenText Fax & Document Distribution Group. OpenText is the market leader in fax and document management solutions.
Edited by
Brooke Neuman
