Has your healthcare system experienced a bottleneck transferring patient information amidst the COVID-19 pandemic? If so, you are not alone. Healthcare systems all over the country have been struggling to keep up with the number of COVID-related file transfers flooding their offices. This has resulted in the loss of pertinent patient information that later needs to be re-entered by hospital administrative staff. Additionally, due to the sheer volume of faxes, offices are getting test results sometimes weeks after the fact, which renders them virtually useless.
With all the advances in medical technology, it’s amazing that all healthcare providers have not yet embraced the advancements in administrative tools. Electronic Medical Records/ Electronic Health Records (EMRs/EHRs) were a huge leap for hospitals but have yet to streamline absolute interoperability between vendors and other hospital systems. With this roadblock to work around, how has your hospital system been filling in the gaps?
The truth is, sometimes faxing is needed to transfer patient data securely, but who says it must be ink and paper? Especially if those paper copies often result in blurry printouts and analog data. According to the CDC, before the COVID-19 pandemic, nearly 90% of lab test results tracking diseases were digitally transmitted. With the pandemic, however, more offices have been sending in results, including clinics that normally only run tests for employers, etc. These places can normally get away with relying on standard fax, but the sheer volume of COVID testing has changed the game.*
The question now becomes:
How do we get all healthcare offices — big and small — transitioned to efax and other digital unified communication methods, so that all healthcare systems can communicate seamlessly without having to worry about bottlenecking and losing patient data?
How the Provider Relief Fund Can Help
Governments claim that Fax is now an urgent need in healthcare systems, meaning it now falls under the Provider Relief fund. This is a great opportunity to streamline and create a more secure data transfer environment for patient files!
The Benefits of Efax
- Secure internal patient file transfer
- Secure patient data transfer between healthcare systems
- Integrates with existing EMR/EHR system
- Less likely to lose data during a file transfer (requiring less time-consuming data entry)
EMRs/EHRs were a great advancement in healthcare, however there is a significant caveat for depending on them for immediate patient data: they are not always interoperable with those implemented in other healthcare systems. That is why efax and other secure unified communications like Webex can help.
Find Secure Unified Communications that Integrate with EPIC and EHRs
Fast and secure interdepartmental communication in hospitals has been another tough arena for maintaining HIPAA compliance standards. Once again, administrative face the same recurring issues. Backed up fax machines, data exposure risk, and bottlenecked communication. A secure team collaboration tool that meets HIPAA compliance standards could streamline inter and intra departmental collaboration and communication.
Our partners at Cisco Webex and XMedius offer cost-effective, secure solutions that will allow you to oust your on-prem fax machines for an efax solution reinforced by secure unified communications.
See how IE and Xmedius partnered to help Prisma Health!
Webex is HIPAA compliant and offers a secure solution for internal and inter-departmental, instantaneous communication. It now integrates with EPIC for secure TeleHealth consultations.
Rather than relying on an outdated system, this will allow you to deliver patient care faster and with more accuracy than by relying on EHR systems and on-prem fax machines alone. Paired with a secure efax option, that does not bottleneck in times of high volume, getting up to speed on a patient’s health history has never been faster.
Deploy Efax and Secure Unified Communications with IE
IE has partnered with tech giants like Cisco and Xmedius to bring you secure, HIPAA compliant collaboration and file exchange solutions. We can help your team build a digital file exchange system the expedites the secure transfer of patient data, while maintaining HIPAA compliance.
For more information on how we can help you implement these solutions into your current healthcare system, please contact us!
Sources:
https://www.hhs.gov/coronavirus/cares-act-provider-relief-fund/faqs/provider-relief-fund-general-info/index.html?language=en%23pr-overview
https://www.hhs.gov/about/news/2020/06/09/hhs-announces-enhanced-provider-portal-relief-fund-payments-for-safety-net-hospitals-medicaid-chip-providers.html
*https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/13/upshot/coronavirus-response-fax-machines.html