I’ll admit, I’m pretty frustrated right now lol. me and my doctor have been trying to submit a referral to a specialist but for the last several weeks, when i call them, they still haven’t gotten it yet. they told me it’s because they only have one fax machine so it refuses any incoming faxes if it’s in the middle of printing a different one.
my problem is, why haven’t we come up with a more modern and secure way of sending medical files?!?! am i crazy for thinking this is a super unprofessional and unnecessary barrier to care?
luckily I’m mobile enough to drive a physical copy to their location, but not everybody who needs to see this type of doctor can do that, nor should they have to.
Where I work, the fax was a way to ensure that information could be sent in multiple ways, if one way would fail. In the medical field (at least where I live) we must have systems with backup systems in a few layers. We have a nice digital medical chart system, and I still have to print out many things and put in a binder that no one ever reads. Because the internet could stop working, or electricity could fail. We even have routines for which types of pen and paper can be used if we need to write things by hand while electricity is gone.
Shit, they could just get a better fucking FAX machine that can put new incoming faxes into a queue. The last fax machine I used (like well over a decade ago) could at least do that.
no kidding! i have enough to deal with, without having to babysit a doctor’s office that won’t update their equipment.
In the eyes of the law, a fax is a secure way to send personal information. An email, even an encrypted one, is not. We need to fix the law, but lawmakers as a rule do not understand technology.
Speaking as someone who works directly in the field: this is just plain factually incorrect. Encrypted email is compliant with patient privacy regulations in the US.
The issue is entirely cultural. Faxes are embedded in many workflows across the industry and people are resistant to change in general. They use faxes because it’s what they’re used to. Faxes are worse in nearly every way than other regulatory-compliant means of communication outside of “this is what we’re used to and already setup to do.”
I am actively working on projects that involve taking fax machines away from clinicians and backend administrators. There are literally zero technical or regulatory hurdles; the difficulty is entirely political.
You’re both right.
Faxes in the eyes of the law are secure, for any privileged or confidential info. So are secured emails, last I checked.
To be clear, this is specifically what I was calling incorrect:
An email, even an encrypted one, is not.
Faxes are one compliant means of electronic communication. They’re just not the only one. Secure email is fine.
this makes no sense to me when patient portals exist. why isn’t there a provider portal that can handle sending medical info back and forth? I can see all my medical details online already.
Providers have a market incentive to provide the most convenient experience to their patients. The market incentive does not exist for sending information to other providers so they will take the path of least resistance to be compliant with regulation
read my post again. this is a provider that is probably losing business because people can’t get their referral in to see them unless they walk it through the door themselves. how is that convenient?
I have never seen a specialist without a giant wait-list. These providers tend to have too many patients so they have a negative incentive for trying to make it easier to reach them.
See, you’re thinking 21st century, but this is both a healthcare management technology and a government regulation issue, so you’re 2 centuries too new. We need to go back to 1843 with the electric printing telegraph, which used pendulums and electric signals to scan images and send them over telegraph wires. That’s where healthcare technology regulations stopped.
That is patently false. Encrypted email and patient portals are absolutely allowed under regulation.
What you have here is a practice that has probably been in operation since the 80s or before, and they refuse to change their ways.
I never claimed that email or patient portals weren’t allowed.
I mean, from a technological perspective email, even encrypted, really isn’t that secure. That being said neither is fax but…
Encryption would protect an email in flight and prevent interception. Faxes have no such capability and are entirely susceptible to being tapped.
HIPAA.
i understand HIPAA. i don’t understand why we are still using the technology we started using in the 60s. my question is why haven’t we found a better way since then?
You can’t even stop junk snail mail or end daylight savings time. Good luck.
