Is your healthcare system experiencing a bottleneck in transferring patient information during the COVID-19 pandemics? You are not the only one experiencing this problem. The volume of COVID-related files flooding into healthcare systems across the country has been a major problem. This has led to the loss of important patient information that must be re-entered by hospital administrative staff. A result of the volume of faxes received, offices sometimes receive test results weeks later than the actual date, making them almost useless.
It’s incredible that not all healthcare providers have yet to embrace the latest medical technology. Electronic Medical Records/ Electronic Health Records (EMRs/EHRs were a big leap for hospitals, but have yet to streamline absolute interoperability among vendors and other hospital system. With thisroadblocktoworkaround, how has your hospital systembeen filling in the gaps?
Faxing can sometimes be necessary to secure patient data. But who says it hasto be ink and paper? Even more so, if the paper copies often resultin blurry printouts or analog data. However, with the pandemic, more offices are sending in results. This includes clinics that usually only run tests for employers. These offices can usually rely on standard fax but the volume of COVID testing has changed everything. *
Now the question is:
How can we get all the healthcare offices, large and small, to switch to efax and other digital unified communication methods so that all healthcare systems can communicate seamlessly without worrying about bottlenecking or losing patient data?
How the Provider Relief FundCanHelp
Governments claim that Fax is an urgent need in healthcare system, so it now falls under theProvider relieffund. This is a great opportunity for streamlined data transfer and a safer environment for patient files.
The Benefits of Efax
Secure internal patientfiletransferSecure patient data transfer between healthcare systemsIntegrates with existing EMR/EHR system Less likely to lose data during a file transfer (requiring less time-consuming data entry)
EMRs/EHRs are a great improvement in healthcare. However, they do not always work with other healthcare systems. Webex and other secure unified communication like efax can help.
Secure Unified Communications That Integrate With EPIC and EHRs
HIPAA compliance standards are also difficult to maintain in hospitals. Once again,administrative facethe same recurring issues.Backed up fax machines, data exposure risk, and bottleneckedcommunication.A secure team collaboration tool that meets HIPAA compliance standardscould streamline inter and intra departmental collaboration and communication.
Cisco WebexandXMedius, our partners, offer cost-effective and secure solutions that will enable you to get rid of your on-premfax machines for anefaxsolution enhanced by secure unified communication.
Check out how IE and Xmedius partnered to help Prisma Health
Webex is HIPAA compliant. It offers secure, instantaneous communication between departments and within them. It integrates with EPIC (Learn more about how to set this integration up here) for secure TeleHealth consultations.
This will allow you to provide patient care faster than relying solely on EHR systems or on-prem Fax machines. Secureefaxoption is a reliable and efficient way to get up-to-date on a patient’s medical history.
Secure Unified Communications and Efax are now available with IE
IE has partnered up with tech giants Cisco and Xmedius to bring you secure, HIPAA-compliant collaboration and file exchanging solutions.
Contact us for more information about how we can help your healthcare system implement these solutions.
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