OpenText Fax & Document Distribution Group

Give fax a break already.

It’s a sad day for one of the world’s most unfairly maligned pieces of hardware. Fax machines just made No. 14 in a list of 15 Current Technologies a Child Born Today Will Never Use. The blogger, Laptop Magazine’s Online Editorial Director Avram Piltch, slotted the hapless device all the way down at No. 14, and for an already misunderstood “gadget that had its heyday in the 1970s” that’s got to hurt.

Now, to be fair, Piltch was only talking about fax machines, and he is almost certainly correct that those appliances will eventually go the way of the dodo. What he failed to mention–and what is too often overlooked–is that fax technology itself (which has already proven its value and resilience for more than a century) can look forward to many more years of usefulness and ubiquity before being forced into early retirement by younger, more attractive methods of communication……or a super-intelligent army of robots.

I’ve come to the conclusion that the problem is not the technology: people are faxing higher volumes faster than ever before, in many cases between IP addresses straight from their email client, or even automatically as preconfigured batches while they sleep. It’s the word: FAX. People can’t help but associate fax with the fax machine and a bygone era of cigarettes and leisure suits.

Facsimile or fax simply means a copy sent using voice technology. With the growing popularity and availability of Fax over IP (FoIP) , there are now dozens of ways to do this securely, even without much of a reliance on analog phone lines or fax machines. Fax servers, protocols and delivery methods are still constantly evolving and have not yet lost pace with competing communication options.

Finally, Mr. Piltch, I will not “let go of the signature requirement.” That “lame excuse for the continued use of the fax machine” is still a very compelling one for newer fax technologies. Keep in mind that fax is a simple, point-to-point transmission involving only two people (the sender and the receiver). A fax can be verifiably tracked throughout its journey between friends and is still much more secure than email or an online signature where receipt confirmation is absent. Fax is still the only transmission that won’t fall down in any court, and thousands of people even use fax to vote in federal elections. Because the basic technology of fax is so simple, it is everywhere: essentially, anyone anywhere in the world who has a phone jack has the capability to fax. This makes it ideal for doing business across industries and borders.

Every day the delusion is spreading that fax is no longer relevant, but with hundreds of millions of faxes being sent and received every single day, I just don’t buy it.

Countless businesses use Microsoft Office 365 for everything from email and calendar services to document access and collaboration. They have already shown their smarts and thriftiness by reducing onsite hardware and software and working in the cloud. So why are some still relying on paper-based faxing and the expensive hardware, supplies and maintenance it requires? Maybe they don’t know about RightFax or Fax Appliance.

OpenText helps thousands of small and mid-sized businesses (SMBs) around the world manage and deliver their business-critical documents. We have dozens of integration options with the most common back-office and other applications has made it extremely attractive to people who don’t want to buy (or learn) new software. One of the most popular recent integrations is with Office 365.

By integrating Fax Appliance or RightFax with Office 365, customers enjoy immediate upfront savings, increased security, and less time shuffling back and forth between workstations and shared standalone fax machines. In cases where sensitive and/or legally binding documents are required to be sent to third parties, fax machines in public areas produce highly visible paper documents and pose a serious risk to information security – potentially resulting in hefty regulatory fines. Our solutions allow you to manage user roles and permissions and fax from your desktop to erase this threat.

We have seen significant benefits for customers who use OpenText’s rich integration with O365. These include:

• More productive employees: No more time-consuming printing, manual faxing, and tracking.

• Lower telecom, paper, and equipment costs: Consolidate phone resources for faxing and stop paying for fax paper, cartridges, and machine maintenance, eliminate costs for filing, long-term archival and manual retrieval of paper faxes.

• Less fax preparation: Any that can be printed can be faxed.

• Improved efficiency: Send higher quality communication more quickly by faxing directly from  Office 365 via Print-to-Fax or email.

• PDF routing: Route incoming faxes to  Office 365 as PDF attachments.

• MFP integration: Fax through our fax solutions without purchasing phone lines and costly fax kits for multiple MFPs.

• Improved audit, compliance, and legal readiness: Audit trails are legally recognized making it easy to provide proof of compliance.

• Document centralization: Keep all your communications in one place by using the  Office 365 email client to send and receive faxes.

• Support of green initiatives: Save trees (and money) by getting rid of a lot of paper.

That’s just what I can think of off the top of my head – basically, if you’re a SMB that uses Office 365 and also needs to fax, OpenText can help. If savings and security alone aren’t enough to pique your interest learn more about the benefits and integration listing from Fax Appliance and RightFax.

Recently we co-sponsored a well-attended webinar highlighting the current state of security and compliance in the healthcare industry. Speakers Rebecca Herold (the Privacy Professor), privacy, security and compliance guru , and Chris Patterson, IT Administrator at Florida Heart and Vascular Associates, were extremely helpful in enlightening the audience using real-world examples and the most up-to-date data.

We’ve had some time to reflect on the webinar, and also to take a look at the responses to the polling questions. Here are a few realities we can take away from these resources:

■ Security and compliance remain the most important issues in healthcare after quality
patient care

■ The healthcare industry is not yet where it needs to be in terms of securing
private health information

■ Solutions do exist to mitigate the problems

■ Digital fax and document delivery will continue to play a central role in these solutions

The problems
Healthcare providers need to maintain a high level of data security for three main reasons: patient care, patient privacy and regulatory compliance. The rise in the use of fax to securely manage and deliver electronic medical records (EMR) solutions are  helping institutions address these concerns, but even fax is vulnerable to tampering if not properly protected, and data leaks continue to plague the industry.

Rebecca shared several real-life examples of recent breaches in fax security including hacking of fax servers, wrong numbers/email addresses, use of standalone fax machines and public networks, and improper document disposal. These problems come from a mixture of human and technological error and often lead to costly failures of compliance with government mandated regulations like HIPAA and HITECH.

According to the poll, about half of healthcare providers are unsatisfied with their ability to comply with HIPPA using digital documents, and more than half of physicians still rely primarily on paper charts.

The success stories 
The good news is that digital fax and document management solutions like Fax Appliance, RightFax and Alchemy are working for thousands of healthcare professionals, including Patterson. After deploying an OpenText fax solution, Patterson reported that security has improved and the hospital has enjoyed savings of more than $200,000 in the three years since implementation. Patterson also said his fax solution paid for itself within two months and has effectively replaced the work of two-and-a-half full-time employees.

The security of Protected Health Information (PHI) is a primary concern for healthcare institutions. PHI management is important not just for patient care and privacy, but also to meet strict regulatory compliance mandates. In the third installment of a bi-annual survey of healthcare providers, a report published in April details the current state of patient data security. The report was commissioned by Kroll Advisory Solutions, a leading risk consulting firm, and published by HIMSS Analytics, a world leader in healthcare IT reporting.

The reason for the report stems from concern over patient data security in light of increased adoption of mobile technology for the exchange of electronic health records (EHR) and, more specifically PHI. By moving PHI to mobile devices, it becomes more vulnerable to breaches. In fact, 31 percent of survey respondents indicated that “information available on a portable device was among the factors most likely to contribute to the risk of a breach.”

An earlier report by the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) found that 207 data breaches in 2010 affected 500 people or more and were caused by:

• Theft
• Loss
• Unauthorized access/disclosure
• Human/technological error
• Improper disposal

Theft accounted for almost half of all breaches that year and affected an estimated 2,979,121 individuals. In the HIMSS survey, more than half of all breaches were internal, but third-party sources were also recorded. Almost all respondents require third parties to sign a business agreement before handling EHR, but only about half indicated they ensure that their third-party vendors conduct regular risk analysis to identify vulnerabilities.

The HIMSS Analytics report found that on top of security issues, healthcare institutions are being torn in two directions. On the one hand, they are tasked with protecting PHI, but on the other they are expected to comply with a multitude of strict regulatory mandates like HIPAA and HITECH. “While organizations are actively taking steps to ensure that patient data is secure, they are so focused on meeting compliance requirements that they have little awareness of the efficacy of their security programs.”

Debate also remains over who exactly oversees which elements of EHR: “As organizations struggle to address data and privacy breaches, a lack of ownership for the issue across the industry remains. Various titles hold responsibility for pieces of the compliance puzzle, ensuring that their organizations meet the mandates and regulations set forth, but the overall security picture continues to elude most.”

The keys then are:

• Controlled document access
• Confidence in third-party vendors
• Clearly defined security and privacy roles

The good news, according to the report, is that the priority of compliance has raised awareness about the gaps in patient data security. Respondents ranked their preparedness at an average of 6.40 on a scale of one to seven in 2012, compared to 6.06 in 2010 and 5.88 in 2008.

While mobile devices remain a concern, technology isn’t always to blame for data breaches, and can in fact be the solution. Such is the case for the thousands of healthcare institutions using fax and document delivery solutions to manage their EHR. Fax is still the preferred method of secure document delivery for healthcare institutions worldwide, and new fax technologies are changing the way we interact with fax.

No longer are workers sending and receiving paper documents at a fax machine in a public area. Instead, they can fax securely via encrypted email, or securely over IP from private, password-protected workstations. Other technologies include archiving tools that can capture, file, distribute and manage millions of documents from a single repository, and can control exactly which users can see a particular record. This allows only the appropriate healthcare professionals easy and immediate access to EHR not only to provide faster, better care for patients, but also to respond quickly to external requests for information.

Tasked with both patient data security and regulatory compliance, digital fax technology can solve problems for the smallest clinic to the largest healthcare network. In light of the HIMSS report’s findings, implementing a secure document management system is good for patients and good for business.

See the full report here.

To learn more about EHR management solutions for healthcare providers, visit OpenText’s Fax and Document Delivery Group healthcare page.

We recently partnered with Healthcare IT News on a new survey report titled, Digital Document Delivery and Management: Achieving Compliance, Security and Improved Patient Care. The report details key findings from a survey investigating trends in the adoption of digital document management systems by healthcare institutions since the rollout of the HITECH Act’s financial incentive programs. The report was based on a January survey of 288 healthcare professionals ranging from senior IT managers and their staff to medical and clinical professionals. Respondents were chosen from healthcare institutions of all sizes. The diverse sample offered a unique insight into the current state of the healthcare IT marketplace and the internal and external drivers that allow some healthcare institutions to keep up with new regulations and IT solutions, and prohibit others from doing so. The survey answered five main questions:

• Who currently has a digital document delivery and management solution?
• What drives organizations to adopt new technologies?
• What challenges do healthcare professionals face regarding document management?
• What are the primary obstacles to adopting a digital document management solution?
• How do organizations primarily share protected health information (PHI)?

The survey looked at a wide range of barriers to the adoption of new health IT in general. Respondents overwhelmingly cited lack of resources as the biggest deterrent, followed by lack of support or buy-in from medical staff and integration problems.

When asked specifically about health record digitization, the survey found that more than a third of respondents had already adopted a digital document management solution and another third were testing, researching, or planning implementation. However, that left about a third of respondents without any solution, and many still weighing their decision.

Digital document delivery is not yet in every hospital and clinic, but the survey did find that 56 percent of office-based physicians used an electronic medical record (EMR) in 2011, a six-percent increase from 2010, indicating a move in the direction of increased adoption on the practitioner side.

Healthcare institutions still rely heavily on faxed documents due to their legal properties and ubiquity, but traditional faxing creates a lot of paper that is difficult to track and vulnerable to tampering. The study said, “Given that many faxed documents contain protected health information (PHI), and two-thirds of respondents share PHI via their EMR systems, it is critical that healthcare organizations integrate their faxing solutions with their EMR systems.” Indeed, security and searchability were cited by almost half of all respondents as the biggest challenge they face when managing documents.

Several case studies were included in the report focusing on the benefits enjoyed by healthcare facilities that do digitize their health records. The study concluded that “the secure and efficient electronic capture, management and delivery of patient information are the foundation to achieving the transformative goals of improving quality of care and patient safety.”

View the report by Healthcare IT News and OpenText here.

The complex and dynamic healthcare IT marketplace was on full display at HIMSS12 in Las Vegas last month. After spending a few days interacting with partners, customers and healthcare IT consumers as a representative of OpenText’s Fax and Document Distribution Group (FDDG), three main trends stood out to me that I feel are important to share with those unable to attend, whether health professionals with IT problems or vendors with IT solutions.

The Cloud
Despite early fears that managing and exchanging sensitive documents like patient information in the cloud would be too unstable or vulnerable, the sentiment is shifting as businesses across all industries become better informed – and consequently more comfortable – with the emerging medium.

Quite a few healthcare IT vendors have done a commendable job of demonstrating that cloud computing can be secure. Although many hospitals and other healthcare providers are realizing they need to step outside of traditional technologies in general, their initial hesitation to embrace cloud is understandable. Many of these institutions have spent a lot of time and money building an IT infrastructure that, while perhaps not as efficient or up-to-date as they would like, makes them feel confident that their sensitive documents are safe. It was great to see more hospitals getting out of their comfort zones and investigating new technologies.

Mobility
To some people, a PDA or other mobile device is simply a phone, a scheduling tool, or even just a neat gadget. But to a growing number of healthcare professionals, these mobile devices have become critical to managing and sharing documents, and, more importantly, delivering quality care.

The continually expanding capabilities and security of mobile devices are making them more and more attractive to healthcare professionals, especially those that need to share sensitive information quickly and without being tied to a desk or a fixed appliance.

HL7 Messaging
Health Level-7 (HL7) messaging is beginning to generate a lot of renewed attention. Originally developed in the U.S. more than 20 years ago as a standard for healthcare information systems, it was quickly adopted by many other nations and remains an important way of managing healthcare information in a unified manner.

Security and compliance has become one of the most daunting challenges for healthcare providers, but their need to communicate quickly and often internationally is growing as well. HL7 is being revisited as a cornerstone for sharing medical records and other health documents.

With these and many other changing trends in mind, our healthcare IT solutions must keep pace. OpenText FDDG will continue to develop document interchange technologies that meet the needs of the Healthcare industry.  Fax remains important, and even as electronic interchange of records grows in Healthcare, fax will still be a backstop.  OpenText continues to put a major focus on secure operability in the cloud, access to critical documents via mobile device, and compatibility with the widest range of applications possible. As Healthcare IT requirements evolve, you can be certain that OpenText will be there to provide superior solutions.

Managing excessive paper-based medical records is not for the faint of heart — especially when compliance violations can result in fines that well exceed seven figures. Healthcare organizations that employ a virtually “paperless” EMR or EHR solution may believe that they are immune to penalties but that’s simply not the case. Send a fax to the wrong person or leave a fax in whole or part at an unattended fax machine and you could be subject to costly fines. In fact, the number and amount of compliancy fines in the US is at an all-time high.

Join OpenText on April 12th at 2:00PM Eastern / 11:00AM Pacific for an educational webinar, where you will hear from security and privacy expert Rebecca Herold, AKA the Privacy Professor, and learn about the risks associated with paper-based communications and processes. During the webcast, attendees will also hear from Chris Patterson, the IT Administrator for Florida Heart and Vascular Associates, and see how they integrated an OpenText digital faxing solution to achieve HIPAA compliance, improve processes, and dramatically lower costs.

Who should attend?

• Healthcare Compliance Officers adopting new healthcare compliance initiatives
• Healthcare Professionals wanting to protect and secure patient information
• Healthcare Practice Managers seeking to improve productivity and patient care
• Healthcare Informatics roles searching for ways to improve workflow and streamline business processes

Register today!

After attending this year’s HIMSS tradeshow, I am as excited as ever about the direction healthcare is heading with regard to new information technologies. Even compared to last year’s event, I can see a real difference in the passion healthcare providers are displaying in seeking out new technologies to deliver better care and service–in particular those that can help them address security, compliance and data privacy. Yes, regulations and compliance mandates like HIPAA means a lot more accountability and a lot more work. But rather than responding to this requirement as if they are being forced to comply, the healthcare community seems eager to find the smartest IT solutions for their compliance needs. They understand that, ultimately, regulatory compliance will improve not just document security, but also patient care and even bottom line.

I attended HIMSS12 representing OpenText’s Fax and Document Distribution Group in an effort to connect with customers in need of a fax-based document management solution. HIMSS is designed to make the job of finding the right IT solutions easy, but it can be difficult to find something if you don’t know what you should be looking for. In some cases, people don’t even know that fax technology can be a viable and effective solution for them. For example, at HIMSS12, I met someone who provides consultancy services for hospitals to improve their process workflows, and she said it had never occurred to her that fax could solve problems for her clients. Further discussions with her saw her realize that OpenText fax solutions can help quite a few of her clients increase efficiency and productivity, reduce costs and enhance the service they offer their customers. It felt great to help her, and it was a welcome reminder that trusted fax technology continues to play a pivotal role in the healthcare marketplace.

It was heartening to see a vibrant healthcare IT dialogue at play, and I look forward to attending next year.

Think of the HIMSS tradeshow as the supermarket of healthcare IT–anything and anyone you might be looking for is there. I showed up this year representing OpenText RightFax and took advantage of a valuable chance to locate and interact with people who can benefit from a fax solution. I also attended to keep up to date on the ever-changing trends in healthcare IT.

One trend that is not changing is the importance of compliance. Compliance continues to stand out as one of the biggest challenges faced by healthcare providers. Fortunately, it’s a challenge we have been able to help many of them meet and conquer. Broad-reaching regulatory mandates like HIPPA make it imperative that they always know where their documents are, as well as who has access to them. That’s exactly the solution RightFax provides and that is why we are doing so much of our business in the healthcare sector.

Still, it’s amazing to see the number of physicians’ offices, clinics, and hospitals that still use paper records. In many cases, they are receiving documents from a bank of old-fashioned fax machines, putting them on a cart, and wheeling them to another room to be scanned and filed…and sometimes lost. This type of system is hardly secure. In a sense, every time you generate a piece of paper, you generate a business problem. It’s these kinds of people I went to HIMSS12 to talk to.

As the largest gathering of its kind in North America, HIMSS remains the best annual venue for me to meet with the most important players in healthcare IT.

This year’s HIMSS tradeshow in Las Vegas brought together individuals from all corners of the healthcare IT marketplace. I attended representing OpenText’s Fax & Document Distribution Group—the leader in the fax server industry–with more than 10,000 installations in hospitals and clinics worldwide. I found it to be a great opportunity to connect with existing partners and customers as well as those HIT vendors who  do not yet have, or who are looking for a replacement for an existing document distribution solution to automate inbound and outbound fax communications from their applications.

Based on my discussions with numerous technology providers at the show, it is clear that fax is still a ubiquitous document exchange platform across the healthcare industry. Fax servers will continue to play a role in healthcare communications for the foreseeable future, even as the industry/government drives toward a fully electronic Health Information Exchange (HIE) framework. The reason for this is that fax remains the lowest common denominator for secure information sharing amongst healthcare providers, whether for a small physician practice, a large 100+ bed hospital, or anyone in between.

This was my second year attending HIMSS, and I am glad I came back. If you are developing or offering a solution for the healthcare IT market, you have to be there. I attend both to expand relationships with existing partners and to generate new business by identifying ISVs who might benefit from a fax server solution. Everyone I needed to see was there, from IT staff and business decision makers to physicians and other healthcare professionals, all providing their unique perspectives on the challenges and opportunities they see ahead in this time of rapid change within the healthcare sector.

Having everyone together at one venue makes it easy to connect with all stakeholders in the healthcare IT marketplace. The annual HIMSS show is an ideal place to do just that. Mark it on your calendar!