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Most healthcare organizations know their fax infrastructure is aging. The server is running a version of software that is no longer actively supported. The hardware is past its warranty period. The maintenance contract expired and was not renewed because the cost was hard to justify for a system that mostly still works. And because it […]

HIPAA’s requirements for transmitting protected health information are specific, but they are frequently misunderstood in ways that create both compliance gaps and unnecessary complexity for healthcare organizations. The most common misunderstandings are that HIPAA prohibits fax, that email is an acceptable alternative as long as it is encrypted, and that any encryption is sufficient to

The prediction that healthcare would eliminate fax has been made with confidence at regular intervals since the early 2000s. Each wave of digital health investment, from EHR adoption under HITECH to health information exchange expansion to FHIR-based interoperability mandates, has been accompanied by predictions that fax would finally be displaced. Those predictions have not been

Every few years, an article circulates declaring that fax in healthcare is finally dying. The EHR will replace it. Secure messaging will replace it. HL7 and FHIR will replace it. Direct Trust will replace it. And every few years, the fax machines keep running, the fax servers keep processing, and the volume of faxes transmitted

A busy receiving line is the most common reason a fax does not go through on the first attempt. It is also the easiest failure to resolve, as long as the fax platform handles it automatically rather than dropping the transmission and waiting for someone to notice. Passport handles a busy receiving line through automatic

Healthcare CIOs manage portfolios of technology infrastructure that range from the genuinely cutting-edge to the critically important but chronically underinvested. Fax tends to fall into the latter category. It is not strategically interesting. It is not the subject of board presentations or vendor pitches at major health IT conferences. It works well enough that it

If your organization is a HIPAA covered entity or a business associate, and you use a fax platform that transmits or stores protected health information, you are required to have a signed Business Associate Agreement with the fax vendor. This is not a best practice. It is a regulatory requirement, and operating without one is

Fax compliance and fax security are terms that are often used interchangeably in healthcare IT conversations, and the conflation creates real problems. An organization can have a fax platform that is technically secure but not operationally compliant. It can also have a platform that checks the compliance documentation boxes but has meaningful security gaps. Understanding

Most healthcare IT teams have a general awareness that their fax infrastructure is aging. The server is old. The software version is behind. The shared fax machine on the clinical floor has been printing faintly for six months and no one has ordered a new toner cartridge because there is a general sense that the

Not all fax platforms are the same, and the gap between a basic cloud fax service and a true enterprise fax platform is significant in terms of compliance capability, operational reliability, integration depth, and total cost of ownership. For healthcare organizations, the stakes of choosing incorrectly are high: a platform that cannot meet HIPAA’s technical