Paperless Productivity

We’re all out to maximize profits. That may or may not be the ultimate purpose of your organization, but it’s more or less necessary for its survival. And we are keenly aware that all digital fax projects, RightFax support decisions, and even minor workflow changes are a means to this end. With that in mind, let’s look at some figures to see how that works in practice.

(For the record, some of these numbers come from our vendors’ research, and others come from our firsthand experience with clients. This is less about statistical precision than about presenting the financial role of fax solutions in a more direct and tangible way. Still, every case is different, so please understand that your mileage may vary.)

One figure we often cite in our blog and websites (and to which our RightFax support clients can often attest) is that a typical ROI timeframe is under a year—and frequently under six months. That might sound a little audacious, so let’s break it down:

An average Fortune 500 company spends around $16 million per year on fax-specific phone service.

Much of this expense reflects dedicated fax lines for traditional fax machines and/or MFDs. Conservatively, let’s say 25% of these devices (a lower share than we often observe) are either a) in place for convenience rather than capacity or b) are MFDs used for faxing.

By replacing fax machines with desktop faxing, and facilitating network faxing from MFDs, a digital fax solution obviates the need for these extra lines.

Thus, fax-related phone costs fall by roughly 25%, or $4 million per year in this hypothetical scenario.

It’s a pretty compelling number, even before accounting for improved workflow efficiency, the prevention of lost documents, and scheduling faxes to exploit off-peak rates. And let’s not forget industry-specific benefits, such as avoiding damages and penalties from stolen or mis-sent medical records.

Long story short, the data all add up to one fact: digital faxing saves money. If you’re ready to explore how RightFax can do the same for your organization, or would just like a casual chat with an expert, then feel free to drop us a line at your convenience. Happy holidays!

After last week’s discussion of inbound faxing and HIPAA, it’s time to turn our attention to the outbound side of things. Besides the usual precautions about keeping fax machines physically locked away to guard PHI, HIPAA has special requirements for the security of outbound transmissions.

More specifically, the law requires reasonable safeguards to ensure the correct information is sent to the correct recipient. For instance, the American Medical Association recommends that offices “verify the recipient’s fax number and use a cover sheet that does not include protected health information.” Unfortunately, this is hard to enforce, and verification of new or seldom-used fax numbers poses a particular challenge.

In recent years, it was found that a California hospital had faxed records to several wrong locations. In an even more egregious instance, one practice sent patient info to an out-of-state businessman for three years before realizing its error! Clearly, conventional faxing is woefully inadequate. And by compounding the growing problem of health information theft, it makes security far harder than it has to be!

What Can We Do?

One underlying need in outbound security is the ability to automate the confirmation of all fax numbers before sending. No reliance on human workers matching numbers at a glance, and no possibility of circumventing the ‘rules.’

There’s a straightforward solution to this high-stakes problem. A digital fax solution can incorporate all the above safeguards into a paperless workflow with full EMR-fax integration, both in- and outbound. In accordance with predefined custom business rules, all destination fax numbers can be check against another source (such as a providers / insurers database) to confirm accuracy. More than just avoiding delays due to typos, this approach can mitigate legal risk in a big way. And if / when audit time comes, RightFax users are well prepared with a granular ‘audit trail’ automatically prepared by the fax solution. Needless to say, fax encryption options ensure all electronic copies of sent faxes are kept under uncompromising security as well.

The opportunities and requirements around outbound fax security vary from office to office, but one thing is consistent: for every one of our clients, a RightFax deployment has created powerful and cost-effective opportunities to maximize fax-related HIPAA compliance. To learn more about fax project architecture and RightFax support, we invite you to contact a representative at your convenience.

As the majority of our RightFax support clients are in the health care industry, fax security is a perennially critical topic. It is obvious that protected health information (PHI) needs to be handled with great care, but what, exactly, are the legal concerns? The answer depends on whether we’re talking about inbound or outbound faxing, as these present slightly different problems. We’ll discuss the outbound side of things in a later post; for now, let’s look at the legal risks of inbound faxing, and how a digital fax solution mitigates them.

Inbound Fax Security

Despite employees’ best efforts to collect faxes as they arrive, the fact is that documents can and do arrive unexpectedly. On a typical fax machine, PHI thus sits out in the open, visible to any and all passers-by, until it is collected and properly filed. HIPAA therefore demands that any unattended fax machine be locked away, accessible only to authorized personnel.

Needless to say, this solution is far from convenient. Physically sequestering an entire inventory of fax machines consumes valuable space and can seriously slow down inbound fax workflows. Even if the inconvenience is surmountable, breaches may be exceedingly hard to detect.

Still more alarmingly, it turns out that run-of-the-mill, low-cost online fax services are not a reliable solution. One insurer learned this the hard way, after its fax service misdirected its U.S. customers’ claims to a firm in Canada! Likewise, an Oregon provider reportedly faxed numerous sensitive documents to an individual’s home over as much as a decade.

And even when information does reach the correct recipient, health information theft has become a booming black-market niche, which makes cutting-edge fax encryption more critical than ever.

Security, Convenience & Cost Savings

With proper configuration and workflow design, digital faxing addresses all the above issues. All the security of fax transmission over the PSTN (phone lines) is retained, but document visibility/access risks are eliminated. Incoming faxes are never printed, but go directly to the intended recipients (whether humans or software), without ever being visible to unauthorized parties—no locks or keys needed. Because faxes are 100% digital, a detailed ‘audit trail’ records each time a document is viewed/sent/received. Additionally, operating costs fall quickly due to reductions in manual input and paper/toner consumption.

For more information about secure, HIPAA-compliant fax solutions, RightFax support, and health care workflow consulting services, please contact us at your convenience.

Cloud faxing solutions like RightFax Connect are rapidly gaining in popularity. However, many users are still running in-house fax servers, but turning to virtualization to reduce administrative burden while increasing recovery capabilities. And as virtual servers have become more common, RightFax functionalities have grown right along with them.

IT departments frequently prefer to virtualize RightFax even though the telecom team requires physical, in-house telephony (whether traditional or IP-based). The Remote Board Server/Remote DocTransport Server (RBS/RDS) is a clever way to support such a configuration, by bridging the gap between a virtual machine and physical fax board. Likewise, even if using Fax-over-IP (FoIP), a RBS will also connect RightFax to the the FoIP licenses (which are effectively a virtual fax board). However, please note that the Business and Branch Office editions of RightFax do not support a RBS; this is available only in the Enterprise, Enterprise Suite, and Enterprise Integration licenses.

The RBS setup process is not terribly complicated, but given that it’s usually part of a deployment or major upgrade, working with your RightFax support provider will ensure a quick and reliable configuration. Your RightFax support partner will provide critical guidance on registry backup, dialing rules setup, SQL connections, and other best practices for a robust digital fax solution. Notably, there are also some major administrative differences between RBS controls in RightFax 10.5 and previous versions, so even those with prior experience managing a RBS will do well to consult with a professional (as is recommended for all upgrades).

For timely assistance with RBS configuration, upgrades to a virtualization-ready RightFax license, or other matters of RightFax support, please contact us today.