As the healthcare industry undergoes rapid digital transformation, many providers prioritize transitioning to electronic health records (EHRs) to streamline workflows, reduce human errors, improve data security and more. However, implementing EHR systems isn’t without its challenges. You’re not alone if you know you must take the plunge but aren’t sure what features to look for or how to orchestrate the transition.

Understanding what electronic medical health record systems involve, what the technology can do for you, the challenges of transitioning to an EHR, the regulatory requirements and strategies for successful adoption is essential for a cost-efficient transition. Let’s take a closer look.

Understanding the Meaning of EHR in Healthcare

First things first — what is EHR in healthcare?

EHR, or electronic health record, is a digital version of a patient’s medical record. It includes essential data like medical history, diagnoses, medications and treatment plans. EHR systems enable healthcare providers to assess, update and share patient information across digital platforms to improve care delivery and operational efficiency.

You may wonder, “How do EHRs differ from electronic medical records (EMRs)?”

Unlike EHRs, EMRs don’t offer interoperability and data-sharing capabilities. EHRs provide a holistic view of a patient’s health, while EMRs focus on patient interactions within a single practice. Moreover, EHRs support data portability across different healthcare systems, while EMRs are typically confined to a specific provider.

How Does EHR in Healthcare Work?

EHR systems in healthcare offer a centralized and secure digital platform for storing, managing, assessing and sharing patient health information. They facilitate safe and seamless data exchange among healthcare providers with these key capabilities:

Secure Data Storage and Access

Electronic health record systems store patient data in a centralized location, allowing healthcare providers to review and update records in real time. They offer access control features, allowing only authorized personnel like doctors, nurses and administrative staff to retrieve sensitive patient information. Additionally, edits in a patient record are synchronized with connected software in real time to ensure access to consistent and accurate information.

Interoperability and Process Automation

Healthcare providers can integrate their electronic health records systems with other software to automate workflows and reduce manual processes, such as data entry, to minimize human errors and potentially life-threatening delays. For example, you may integrate your EHR with Clarity Clinical Documentation™ to streamline fax management. The solution automatically transfers information in faxed documents to patient records to reduce administrative workload and improve data accuracy. eFax Unite™, by contrast, enhances interoperability by combining cloud-based faxing with a HIPAA-secure, HL7- and FHIR-compliant platform. 

Ordering and Decision Support

EHR vendors often incorporate tools like Computerized Physician Order Entry (CPOE) and Clinical Decision Support (CDS) to help practices standardize and streamline workflows. For example, CPOE enables healthcare providers to order medications, lab tests and procedures directly within an EHR platform, reducing transcription errors. Meanwhile, CDS tools analyze patient data against the latest medical research to help healthcare providers make informed decisions about treatments and diagnoses.

8 Core Components of EHR Systems in Healthcare

An EHR system combines these core components to provide a complete, accessible view of a patient’s health:

1. Patient medical history: Record a patient’s medical conditions, allergies, surgeries and family history to give providers health context for informed decision-making.
2. Diagnoses and problem lists: Document current and past diagnoses to help healthcare providers track chronic conditions and guide ongoing treatment plans.
3. Medications: Provide up-to-date records of all prescribed and previously taken medications to ensure safe prescribing practices and prevent adverse drug interactions or duplicate prescriptions.
4. Treatment plans: Document recommended treatments, procedures and follow-up care, allowing all involved healthcare professionals to follow a unified care approach.
5. Laboratory and test results: Centralize lab results, imaging studies and diagnostic tests to give providers access to historical and current results for trend analysis and accurate diagnoses.
6. ePrescribing: Allow providers to send prescriptions directly to pharmacies, reducing errors from handwritten prescriptions and improving medication management.
7. Care coordination and communication tools: Facilitate seamless communication among healthcare providers to ensure continuity of care, especially for patients with complex conditions.
8. Secure data storage and accessibility: Securely store patient information per data protection standards while allowing providers to access records in real-time and from various locations to enhance collaborative care and shorten response time.

The Advantages of Electronic Health Records in Modern Healthcare

EHR systems help providers enhance patient care, streamline operations, improve communication and secure sensitive data. Here are the primary benefits of using EHR in healthcare:

Improved Patient Care

Consolidated health information and comprehensive health tracking offer a holistic view, enabling healthcare providers to track, diagnose and monitor patient health. Meanwhile, EHRs support patient portals to provide patients with direct, secure access to their health data, empowering them to become active participants in their care. Additionally, integration with tools like Clarity CD ensures that faxed patient information is processed quickly and accurately for timely decision-making. 

Increased Operational Efficiency

EHRs automate data entry and repetitive processes to reduce errors and facilitate workflows, freeing clinicians and staff from administrative tasks to focus on care delivery. Many EHRs also incorporate AI-powered technologies to streamline operations. For example, Clarity CD links faxed documents to patient records, turning unstructured information into structured data and securely routes it to the appropriate patient record without human intervention, enhancing accuracy and productivity. eFax Unite enhances workflow efficiency by routing digital faxes and scanned documents directly into patient records with minimal setup. This automation eliminates the need for manual data entry, speeds up document processing, and ensures that all patient-related information is immediately accessible within the EHR.

Enhanced Data Security

Reputable EHR vendors adhere to rigorous security regulations (e.g., HIPAA) to protect sensitive medical records and patient information. These platforms offer the latest security features, including encryption, audit trails, access control, multi-factor authentication and automatic updates, to safeguard against unauthorized access. 

Streamlined Communication and Coordination

An ERH system enables multiple healthcare providers to access and share patient data for seamless collaboration. Meanwhile, interoperability with Health Information Exchanges (HIEs) supports secure sharing of patient information across disparate healthcare systems to ensure care continuity. Moreover, document-handling tools like Clarity CD allow facilities to link faxed documents with patient files, minimizing the risks of misplacing information and delays caused by manual processes.

Understanding Challenges in EHR Implementation

Implementing electronic health record systems is a substantial undertaking and healthcare organizations must address challenges related to cost, training, integration and more to ensure successful adoption and long-term ROI. Let’s review the key challenges of EHR implementation in healthcare and how you may address them:

High Costs and Budget Constraints

Implementing a robust EHR system can be financially prohibitive, especially for smaller practices. Healthcare organizations must consider the initial investment while allocating a sufficient budget for ongoing training, updates, technical support and system maintenance. Fortunately, programs like the Medicare and Medicaid EHR Incentive Programs can help mitigate these costs, offering financial support to encourage EHR adoption among providers.

Training and User Adoption

Effective use of EHR systems requires comprehensive training, and the learning curve can be steep for less tech-savvy staff members. Besides ensuring technical competence, leadership must implement change management with comprehensive employee education, training and support. Also, choose a platform with intuitive user interfaces and workflows to reduce frustration, promote user adoption and minimize the friction toward a successful transition.

Interoperability and System Integration

Seamless data exchange across healthcare providers hinges upon EHR interoperability. While the Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT (ONC) certifies EHR systems that meet interoperability standards like FHIR (Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources) and HL7, variations in implementation and challenges in aligning multiple systems (e.g., legacy software) can create technical barriers, making integration complex, costly and time-consuming.

Data Privacy and Security Concerns

EHRs contain highly sensitive patient information, and providers must prevent data theft, unauthorized access and file tampering to ensure privacy and HIPAA compliance. The good news is that reputable EHR vendors offer robust cybersecurity features to help healthcare organizations protect their data, enforce governance policies, support data integrity, implement monitoring and minimize errors, data leaks and breaches.

Navigating Legal and Regulatory Frameworks Governing EHR Systems

Privacy and data security are critical considerations in EHR implementation. Healthcare providers must adhere to regulatory frameworks to protect patient data and uphold the integrity of healthcare practices. Here are the key laws and regulations governing EHR implementation in healthcare practices:

1. The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) sets strict guidelines to protect patient health information in the U.S., mandating healthcare providers and EHR systems to implement safeguards like data encryption, access controls and audit trails to prevent unauthorized access, use or disclosure of patient data.
2. General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) establishes comprehensive guidelines for data privacy and protection, including obtaining patient consent and ensuring data portability, for organizations handling the data of EU citizens. Under this law, healthcare providers must use an EHR that allows patients to access their health data and request erasure.
3. The Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health (HITECH) Act incentivizes healthcare providers in the U.S. to adopt and meaningfully use EHR systems through financial rewards. It also mandates providers to notify affected individuals and the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) of data breaches.
4. Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) Interoperability and Patient Access Rule requires healthcare providers and payers participating in Medicare and Medicaid programs to offer patients easy access to their health data. Therefore, EHR systems must support interoperability across healthcare networks.

Health information management (HIM) professionals ensure that their organization’s EHR systems adhere to these regulations. They should implement data governance policies to protect patient information and ensure data integrity. For example, they must monitor EHR systems to verify compliance with evolving regulations and perform audits to assess data protection practices.

Strategies for Successful EHR Adoption

Transitioning to an EHR system is a significant undertaking that requires strategic planning, change management and ongoing support. Healthcare organizations must approach the transition methodically, addressing technical and human factors:

Select the Right EHR Solution

Evaluate your needs and priorities based on clinical, administrative and reporting requirements. Engage stakeholders in the software selection process to align functionalities with workflows. Also, assess an EHR vendor’s reliability, compliance with relevant standards (e.g., ISO/HL7), system interoperability, scalability and data security capabilities.

Plan the Implementation Process

Adopt a phased approach and prepare thorough documentation to minimize disruptions and manage risks. Set clear goals, timelines and realistic milestones. Assess implementation readiness and identify infrastructure or staffing gaps. Then, allocate resources and assign responsibilities with leadership involvement and support.

Provide Staff Training

Improve user adoption with role-specific training that reflects daily tasks and workflows. Offer multiple formats (e.g., in-person sessions, e-learning modules, job aids) to accommodate diverse learning styles. Implement a help desk or support system for troubleshooting and continuous assistance post-implementation.

Adapt and Optimize Clinical Workflows

Map existing procedures and compare then with new EHR-driven processes. Implement change management strategies to address resistance and involve users in workflow redesign to minimize disruptions while enhancing clinical efficiency and patient safety. Also, monitor and refine workflows continuously based on user feedback and performance data.

Looking Forward: The Evolution of EHR in Healthcare

Future EHRs will go beyond documentation and data retrieval to actively support clinical decision-making. By integrating advanced analytics, artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning, EHRs will help providers predict health risks and deliver real-time, evidence-based recommendations. Additionally, EHRs will move toward greater interoperability and standardization to unify patient records and improve the continuity of care.

The future of EHRs will focus on patient-centric innovations, such as expanded patient portals, integration with wearable health devices and remote monitoring technologies and support for personalized medicine using genomic and lifestyle data. Finally, advances in cloud technologies and edge computing will offer greater security, scalability, flexibility, reliability and cost-efficiency, allowing secure access from anywhere to deliver quality healthcare to more people and places.

Kamran Shafii

Content Manager

The advent of electronic health records (EHRs) has transformed the way patient information is collected and shared among healthcare providers, resulting in enhanced efficiency in healthcare delivery and improved overall patient outcomes. However, EHRs have also led to the fragmentation of healthcare systems, with providers and healthcare entities adopting different EHR solutions; this, in turn, has resulted in clinical data silos and inefficiencies arising from a lack of EHR harmonization. This disconnect makes it difficult for healthcare providers to paint a complete picture of a patient’s medical profile and hinders their ability to render informed care decisions.

This guide analyzes how EHR integration addresses these issues by connecting disparate healthcare systems via a single platform and interface. By enabling patient data to flow freely across varying EHR workflows, a well-designed integration allows healthcare providers to fully realize the benefits of EHRs: end-to-end clinical visibility, improved patient care and optimized workflow efficiencies.

Understanding EHR Integration

According to a recent survey by the American Hospital Association, most office-based physicians (78%) and nearly all non-federal acute care hospitals (96%) have adopted a certified EHR system. Given the ubiquity of EHR systems, the ability for these solutions to communicate with each other across the spectrum of care is a crucial requirement. EHR integration is, therefore, a critical enabler of digital transformation in healthcare.

What Is EHR Integration?

EHR integration is the seamless interoperability and connectivity between different EHR systems, healthcare applications and related technologies. With a properly working EHR integration, diverse healthcare systems can communicate, share data and provide a cohesive, comprehensive view of a patient’s medical history and care. For example, an optimal EHR integration allows disparate players and providers across the healthcare value chain to access a patient’s digital medical history and relevant data: diagnosis, medications, allergies, test results and treatment plans, and more. All the necessary medical background information for a patient, with the requisite detail level, is viewed and shared securely via an EHR integration with relevant healthcare parties. 

Why Is EHR Integration Important?

As the rise of EHR has eliminated the problems that arise with paper records (e.g., data loss, lack of standards, errors related to manual data entry and paper-based document management), EHR integration is now necessary to address the resulting islands of disparate data and lack of visibility into a patient’s complete medical profile. EHR integration enables the aggregation of comprehensive patient information from many different sources into a single, unified record. With a holistic view of a patient’s health data, healthcare providers can make better-informed healthcare decisions, as well as aggregate and analyze patient data from diverse sources to implement broader preventative measures and improve overall health outcomes throughout the community.

The Benefits of EHR Integration

Improved Healthcare Quality

EHR integration empowers healthcare providers with a comprehensive view of their patients’ health, drastically improving the quality of patient care. A well-designed EHR integration provides all relevant healthcare parties with instant access to patient information, promoting cooperation among care teams, increasing productivity and enhancing coordinated decision-making.

Reduced Errors and Enhanced Safety

EHR integration allows providers to make better clinical decisions with fewer diagnostic errors by enabling access to patients’ complete medical records. By minimizing manual data entry and automating processes, EHR integration helps reduce the likelihood of errors associated with transcription and data duplication. The results are improved patient safety and quality of care.

Promoting Collective Patient Care

A patient’s healthcare journey consists of many connected entities that all contribute to wellness and/or recovery; EH integration enhances care coordination across these entities. Consider a patient with both acute and chronic conditions — they may receive care from a variety of different provider types, from hospitals, primary care providers and specialists to skilled nursing facilities and home care, to name a few. Each of these entities provides a different snapshot of a patient’s medical history. For them to work together in delivering treatment efficacy, they must pass data to each other to gain situational awareness regarding the status of the patient’s treatment. EHR integration enables this clinical data exchange and interoperability.

The EHR Integration Process

A well-designed EHR integration roadmap consists of the following key steps: pre-integration planning and assessments, implementation planning and strategy development, EHR system selection, analysis of data migration and interoperability requirements, analysis of workflow optimization requirements and change management and staff training.

Pre-Integration Planning and Assessments

EHR integration efforts should start with a comprehensive needs assessment, including the analysis of existing workflows, identification of data sources that require integration and the determination of the desired end state/outcomes. Based on these planning and assessment efforts, you can better formulate an integration strategy that addresses your specific needs and goals with the proper key performance indicators (KPIs). You should evaluate existing systems in your ecosystem and map out their key features, functionality and interoperability capabilities. High-level planning for staff training and change management processes (e.g., appropriate training times and scheduling necessary outages) should also take place during this step. For example, EHR integration should be rolled out during off-peak timeframes and when patient data influx is minimal.

Risk management activities and assessments should also take place during this step, such as determining various if/then scenarios and points of contact for system failures, backups and recoveries. These activities will likely involve pre-integration planning discussions with IT and security teams.

Choosing the Right EHR System

In evaluating an EHR system — especially one that will be part of an integrated workflow — you should analyze both the solution and the vendor. The solution should support EHR integrations through standardized data formats for seamless and secure integration (i.e., it should use data formats easily digested/understood by different systems) and share/transmit data in a secure and compliant way. The vendor should fulfill the role of competent technology consulting partner; candidate solutions should, therefore, be evaluated based on the vendor’s experience in healthcare IT integrations and their depth of understanding of healthcare data standards and security protocols. You should also evaluate the vendor’s track record of successful EHR integrations to verify that their solution and capabilities align with your long-term goals.

Security, Data Privacy and Compliance

Security, data privacy and compliance are arguably the most crucial concerns regarding healthcare data and EHR integrations. With healthcare data breaches on the rise, robust security protocols are essential for any type of EHR integration, and protecting sensitive patient data should be front-and-center when selecting the right EHR system. You should ensure that EHR systems and integration efforts include the proper access controls, encryption protocols and security audits. EHR systems should comply with standards such as the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) to preserve patient data privacy and avoid potential legal ramifications.

Application Programming Interface (API) Integrations and Standards

APIs are the de-facto method for integrating data across disparate systems, and API-based EHR integrations are typical of modern cloud-based EHR systems. At their core, APIs allow for flexible integrations with a broad range of healthcare systems and promote wider data accessibility by facilitating communication and data exchange between different software applications — for example, lab portals, billing systems and remote patient monitoring applications. However, API capabilities are unique per solution — that is, you can only extract and insert data elements specified by the vendor in their API. You should evaluate the solution’s API to ensure that it exposes the necessary data and uses a common API format. For example, representational state transfer (REST) is a common API format used by modern cloud software systems.

You should also ensure that your EHR system uses common frameworks for exchanging clinical data, such as the following standards:

• Health Level Seven (HL7): HL7 (Health Level Seven) is an organization and widely adopted standard for healthcare data exchange interoperability that prescribes a common structure for sharing healthcare-related data. As a REST-based standard, HL7 incorporates HTTP request/response processes as well as XML and JSON formats. This makes it highly popular among modern EHR vendors and cloud-based EHR systems.
• Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources (FHIR): FHIR is another common standard from HL7 for medical data transmission that employs application programming interfaces (APIs) and web architectures to ensure interoperability and seamless data exchange. The standard builds on previous data format standards from HL7 to allow for modularity, simplicity and ease of use. FHIR is commonly used for contemporary EHR integration projects as well as internal system communications in healthcare facilities.
• Consolidated Clinical Document Architecture (C-CDA): C-CDA is an XML-based markup standard that consists of templates and guidelines for structuring and sharing patient/clinical data across EHR systems. The standard meets the American Society for Testing and Materials (ASTM) Continuity of Care Record (CCR) standards for sharing clinical data like discharge summaries, progress notes and test results. 

Analyzing Data Migration Requirements and Interoperability

Interoperability issues are more common than not, considering the wide array of EHR systems used by various entities that comprise the healthcare ecosystem (e.g., small/speciality clinics, labs, hospitals, healthcare providers). APIs may streamline integrations with modern healthcare systems, but legacy systems and highly customized solutions may not work with popular API standards like REST. To address potential data migration and compatibility issues between EHR systems, you should map out your organization’s existing medical data-sharing processes, identify any outlier EHR systems and plan contingency measures around them. 

Analyzing Workflow Optimization Requirements

An optimized, streamlined healthcare workflow enables providers to exchange critical patient information securely and seamlessly. An EHR integration should, therefore, address areas of the healthcare workflow that require the most data fluidity and efficiency — stated differently, they should help minimize time-consuming tasks and manual efforts. For example, solutions like eFax Unite™ optimize faxing and document management workflows by removing several steps that are necessary for traditional paper-based and unintegrated fax workflows, allowing care teams to be more attentive to their patients. Users can funnel all their inbound documents (e.g., faxes, scanned PDFs, downloads) into a single intake process, as well as perform patient lookups directly within the same interface to ensure proper patient mapping without having to retype entire records.

Change Management and Staff Training

In a perfect world, EHR integrations are developed and deployed without little or no disruptions; however, your change management plans should account for the real-world possibility of glitches and roadblocks. Crucially, your planning should include measures to deal with these scenarios, including the identification of vendor resources and contacts that can assist in resolving integration issues. And although resistance to change is a natural occurrence, change management plans that address potential staff push-back with clear communication, ongoing support and guidance and open channels for feedback and suggestions can help smoothen team friction and facilitate smoother integration roll-out and adoption. 

Staff training is a crucial aspect of EHR integration change management, as new implementations are likely to disrupt users accustomed to existing workflows and processes; this is especially true if team members are using manual and/or paper-based procedures. You should provide comprehensive training to equip staff with the knowledge and skills to navigate newly integrated systems. 

Overcoming Common Challenges

Technical Challenges

Different EHR vendors’ APIs will vary in terms of the data exposed and data insertion capabilities. Despite these differences, you should ensure that, at a minimum, your EHR systems and integrations follow widely adopted protocols for healthcare data sharing and interoperability like HL7, FHR and C-CDA, as well as common API frameworks such as REST. 

Security and Regulatory Compliance Concerns

Healthcare entities, including both providers and software vendors, must implement industry-standard security protocols like encryption and access controls to safeguard sensitive patient information. To comply with HIPAA regulations, protect patient data and avoid legal repercussions, you should validate that your EHR solutions and integrations incorporate strong data privacy and security; along with HIPAA compliance, cybersecurity standards such as HITRUST, NIST and ISO 27001 should also be taken into account in your EHR integrations. For example, eFax Unite is a HITRUST-certified and HIPAA-compliant solution that offers full data encryption and adherence to common healthcare data standards like HL7 and FHIR.

Cost and Resource Constraints

EHR solutions and integrations can vary widely in cost, depending on the EHR vendor, required functionality and complexity of the integration. Cloud-based EHR platforms are the most cost-effective, usually subscription-based and require little (if any) upfront capital expenditures. As a completely cloud-based solution, eFax Unite scales with your organization’s needs and requires no capital expenditures (e.g., no servers or local hardware). In contrast, on-premise solutions typically require significant hardware and software-related investments and are costlier to manage and maintain.

Integrating eFax Corporate with eFax Unite

By integrating an EHR with cloud-faxing systems, your healthcare organization improves interoperability across its technology stack. Through its integration with eFax Corporate®, a leading HIPAA-compliant and HITRUST-certified digital cloud fax technology, eFax Unite brings together common data exchange networks, a digital cloud fax, patient information queries,and direct secure messaging in a HIPAA secure, HL7 standard compliant platform, compliant with FHIR rules and specifications. Providers awash in an abundance of digital and paper-based documents (e.g., faxes, direct messages, referrals) can streamline their workflows, manage patient data more effectively and enhance connectivity across the continuum of care via a single, intuitive and secure interface.

The Future of EHR Integration

EHR integration will invariably become more diversified in the future, incorporating different backend systems, fulfillment systems, connected healthcare equipment and cloud services. Regardless of the type, EHR integration efforts all go towards scaling healthcare automation while reducing the risk of manual errors. For example, the integration of faxing and EHR systems both automates data ingesting/processing and mitigates human error and risk. 

Emerging Trends and Technologies

More EHR Integration Across Disparate Systems

EHR integration will become more prevalent across different types of medical technologies and services. Lab systems will automatically transfer test results directly into the EHR, mitigating the risk of manual data entry errors while ensuring that providers and specialists can access updated patient data. Similarly, integrations with radiology, imaging and other testing systems will enable doctors to view X-rays, MRIs and other diagnostic imagery directly from EHRs.

EHR Integrations with Different Healthcare Value Chain Players

Different healthcare value-chain players will continue to implement and support EHR integrations. For example, integrations with on-premise and online pharmacies will enable the sharing of medication history, allergy information and potential drug interactions, resulting in improved medication adherence and a reduced risk of adverse drug reactions. 

On the patient side, users will be empowered to take a more active role in their healthcare journeys. Increasingly diverse patient-generated data will be exchanged between users and EHR systems, resulting in more accurate health assessments, preventative alerts and corrective advice and more. Patient portal integrations will allow users to safely access their health information, including lab results and progress notes. Wearable devices like smartwatches, fitness trackers and other monitoring technologies will be integrated with EHRs to capture real-time patient data like heart rate and blood pressure. Providers can then use this data to glean valuable insights into a patient’s health and well-being.

AI/ML EHR Integrations

In the future, EHR integrations with AI will become increasingly commonplace. The NIH’s current project involving the replacement of its aging EHR system is driven largely by the need to accelerate AI tooling usage, with the new system’s AI capabilities powering a major part of the organization’s clinical decision-making. Integrations with large language models (LLMs) for gleaning real-world insights and data will allow healthcare professionals to connect patient data with real-time public data and up-to-date treatment information.

EHR Integration and Value-Based Care

Value-based care emphasizes integrated care; to this end, healthcare providers must participate in a collaborative effort to improve the patient’s physical, mental, behavioral and social well-being versus focusing on a specific health issue or disease. EHR integration enables this harmonization across healthcare players by unifying all entities and workflows in the value chain to improve patient outcomes and overall health. Through EHR integration and value-based care, healthcare professionals can focus on proactively improving patient care and overall wellness and preventative treatments. 

EHR Integration for Improved Healthcare Delivery Models 

Ultimately, the goals of EHR integration and healthcare system interoperability are improved patient care initiatives, decreased clinical errors and improved care coordination efforts across the healthcare value chain. By enabling a unified healthcare ecosystem, EHR integration empowers providers with a comprehensive view of patient health, facilitates better-informed care decisions, and minimizes errors in diagnosis and treatment. Furthermore, streamlined workflows, enhanced communication and data-driven insights boost healthcare efficiency and contribute to improved patient outcomes.

Kamran Shafii

Content Manager

From improving public health and quality of care to minimizing overhead costs and ensuring a stable revenue cycle, proper documentation is essential for nearly every aspect of the healthcare industry. Its importance will continue to rise as payment models increasingly rely on value-based metrics. 

As critical they are, the requirements placed on providers to generate properly documented medical records can put a heavy burden on clinicians, hindering their ability to deliver quality patient care. A recent survey demonstrated this trend, as 36% of physicians said they spend more than half of their time on administrative tasks related to patients’ electronic health records (EHRs) — and 72% expect that number to rise. 

Clinical documentation improvement (CDI) is the process of reviewing medical records and documentation for completeness and accuracy. CDI in healthcare aims to improve both patient care and administrative operations by optimizing documentation practices, all while reducing the burden placed on clinicians. 

From the patient’s perspective, the result is elevated engagement, greater satisfaction, and higher-quality care. From the organization’s perspective, the result is fewer claims denials, higher profitability, and less of a burden on clinicians — a win-win-win for all parties involved. 

In this article, we’ll take a look at the role clinical documentation improvement plays and how it can benefit the patient, the practice, and the provider. We’ll also explain its importance for proper revenue cycle management (RCM) and then list some strategies on how you can ensure your clinical documentation improvement efforts are successful.

What is Clinical Documentation Improvement?

Clinical documentation improvement is the process of carefully scanning a patient’s medical records to make sure that their condition and all services rendered are articulated such that all claims can be accurately submitted to payers. CDI checks medical record documentation for completeness and accuracy, and it includes a review of factors such as the patient’s disease process, diagnostic findings, and considerations of what might be missing or need further clarification. 

A patient’s medical records serve as a repository for all of their healthcare information, summarizing their clinical status. By rigorously inspecting a patient’s health records and identifying any gaps in the existing body of knowledge, clinical documentation improvement helps deliver a clearer picture of the patient’s health. 

Simultaneously, CDI clarifies the exact scope of all medical services rendered to the patient. This enables medical coders to submit accurate claims to payers, and it also helps organizations receive adequate reimbursements. 

While CDI provides clarity on a patient’s condition as a whole, its scope is primarily confined to data generated during the patient’s visit, or shortly thereafter. Possible items that a clinical documentation specialist (CDS) might check for include:

• Accuracy
• Precision
• Completeness
• Consistency
• Legibility
• Timeliness

By examining these factors, CDI helps create a more circumspect view not only of the patient’s health status but also of the services rendered so that organizations can be compensated accordingly. 

Why is Clinical Documentation Improvement Important in Healthcare?

All medical documentation plays a critical role in healthcare. The healthcare industry relies on proper documentation from both a patient care and a revenue management standpoint. 

In the healthcare industry, accurate clinical documentation is mandatory. Clinical Documentation Improvement makes medical records clear, complete, and precise. This significantly impacts various aspects of healthcare, from patient care to billing and compliance.

Here’s why CDI is important:

• Improved Patient Care

Clear documentation helps doctors accurately assess a patient’s condition. Patients receive the best possible care because the likelihood of errors in decision-making due to unclear information is minimized. This is especially important when multiple doctors are treating the same patient.

• Accurate Billing

Accurate documentation is essential for determining the monetary value of services provided by healthcare providers. Correct billing practices help hospitals and clinics remain financially stable, allowing them to continue delivering quality care.

• Regulatory Compliance

Healthcare professionals must adhere strictly to the documentation standards set by regulatory bodies. CDI in healthcare helps maintain compliance with these standards, preventing legal issues and penalties.

• Data Quality and Analytics

High-quality documentation is vital for obtaining accurate data analytics. Detailed patient records enable healthcare organizations to analyze trends, measure performance, and identify areas for improvement. This data-driven approach in CDI supports medical research and the development of new treatment protocols.

• Patient Trust and Satisfaction

Gaining the trust of patients is a primary goal for healthcare providers. Thorough and accurate recording of medical history helps create the most effective treatment plans. Accurate data availability significant for this process. Providing high-quality care fosters patient confidence and leads to satisfaction with the treatment received.

The Role of Accurate Clinical Documentation in Patient Care

Without proper documentation, patient care suffers. Accurate documentation can have a direct impact on the patient’s quality of life, while inaccurate documentation can result in negative health outcomes — and even the loss of life. This list is not exhaustive, but inadequate documentation may result in: 

• Physician errors
• Overlooked allergies or medical conditions
• Miscommunication
• Incomplete patient history
• Missed prescription refills

At best, subpar documentation can leave patients feeling frustrated that their care team is failing to understand their medical condition. At worst, poor documentation practices can lead to medical errors such as incorrect operations, or even critical oversights that harm a patient’s health. 

Regardless of how severe the outcome may be, CDI can help. For example, when CDI specialists review a patient’s chart, they may identify aspects of their condition that had previously been overlooked. They may also spot conflicting clinician reports, helping to prevent errors before they ever arise. In either case, the careful examination that CDI entails helps identify missing pieces on the patient’s health status and empowers clinicians to deliver better care in the process. 

CDI’s Impact on Revenue Cycle Management

CDI in healthcare doesn’t just pertain to patient care. By fully articulating the scope of all services rendered, CDI can improve a healthcare organization’s efficiency, reduce its liability, and stabilize its revenue cycle management. Some of the main ways that CDI can benefit an organization’s RCM include:

• Fewer claims denials: By thoroughly explaining the patient’s condition and how they were treated, CDI conveys to payers the reason for and scope of the services that were provided. This reduces the likelihood of a denial.
• Faster payments: The delays caused by denied claims can destabilize revenue cycles, preventing organizations from receiving their payments on time. CDI resolves this problem by ensuring that medical records are complete so that claims are more likely to be approved in a timely fashion.
• Higher reimbursement rates: CDI allows medical coders to translate all of the data within a patient’s health record into a billable code. This helps ensure organizations receive accurate reimbursements that reflect all of the treatments they provided.

Implementing CDI: Strategies for Success

Once organizations understand the many benefits it offers, they may want to implement CDI as quickly as possible. They may hastily begin searching for CDI software, seek out a provider that offers CDI services, hire educators to give their staff CDI training, and take other steps before strategically planning their implementation. 

While each of those steps is an important part of the process, establishing an efficient CDI system requires more planning than that. A better approach is to evaluate your people, technology, and processes, identifying existing strengths and opportunities for growth. The following tactics can help you get started. 

1. Standardized CDI Workflows for Chart Reviews

It’s neither feasible nor welcome to query a clinician every single time a question arises regarding a medical record. If you want your CDI system to gain traction on your team, you’ll need to devise a standardized workflow to help decide when a chart should be queried. This may entail establishing protocols that determine when to consult with clinicians, deciding how often charts will be audited, and more.

Organizations such as the American Health Information Management Association (AHIMA) offer a variety of resources to help providers seeking to optimize their medical workflows.

2. Leverage Data Analytics in CDI to Identify Trends

As technology becomes more intelligent, organizations of all types will be able to extract sharper, more actionable insights from data they never knew was available before. This is especially true within the healthcare industry, where many CDI software solutions have built-in analytics. From capturing unstructured data to identifying potential discrepancies, these analytical tools enable team members to spot trends that could improve your interoperability and take your organization to the next level. 

3. Hiring and Training CDI Specialists

Even with the right tools in place, a CDI system is only as strong as the people behind it. Your implementation efforts won’t go far without a clinical documentation specialist. Trained in both healthcare and medical coding, CDI specialists have both clinical and coding knowledge, allowing them to bridge the gap between the two. 

CDI specialists are usually registered nurses (RNs) who have some background or certification in medical coding, but they could have other backgrounds as well. Other possibilities include medical coders who have obtained their CDI certification but have less experience than an RN. The key is to find someone who can reasonably understand a patient’s medical condition by viewing their chart and can translate that knowledge into the proper code. 

4. Ongoing CDI Staff Training

Even with a qualified specialist, implementing an effective CDI framework requires all hands to be on deck. Clinicians will need to be informed on how their documentation practices can improve, and medical coders will need a clear understanding of which services can be billed. 

To ensure that all team members are exercising best practices, your CDI management team should provide regular training. Bodies such as the Association of Clinical Documentation Integrity Specialists (ACDIS) offer opportunities for both CDI training and CDI certification, keeping your team at the industry’s helm.

5. Develop Trust and Respect With Stakeholders

For your CDI framework to be a success, you’ll need buy-in from all parties involved. That means establishing trust and respect among clinicians, coders, clinical documentation specialists, and the rest of your team. And building that trust entails convincing clinicians that CDI can lighten their workload, rather than making it heavier.

6. Regular CDI Reporting to Leadership

As with all components of healthcare operations, effective CDI management is a must, and leadership will need periodic reports on how the project is faring. This means conducting chart audits at a consistent frequency, evaluating physician report cards on a regular basis, and identifying areas for growth.

7. Foster Department Collaboration

Working together with other departments is a key benefit of CDI in healthcare, as it facilitates collaboration between teams. Take full advantage of this benefit by having a healthcare provider conduct a concurrent review of the chart so that they can catch errors that others may have missed. 

Enhancing Healthcare with Effective CDI and Medical Coding

How do CDI Specialists Review Medical Records? 

CDI specialists review medical reports to maintain accuracy and completeness. Their primary responsibilities include:

1. Verifying that patient documentation accurately reflects diagnoses.
2. Reviewing clinical notes, lab results, and other diagnostic information to prevent critical information from being overlooked.
3. Collaborating closely with healthcare providers to maintain clarity and precision in the final medical record.
4. Transferring data to medical coders to convert it into standardized medical codes.

Importance of Proper Coding for Financial Compensation:

Proper coding guarantees that hospitals receive appropriate financial compensation for the services provided to patients. This includes reducing billing errors, preventing claim denials, minimizing revenue losses due to undercoding, as well as avoiding penalties and legal consequences.

Accurate coding reflects the actual condition of a patient and the complexity of the care provided. It also accounts for the resources utilized during treatment, which is essential for calculating correct reimbursements. This approach supports financial stability for hospitals and their ability to provide high-quality patient care.

Beyond financial compensation, proper coding is important for:

1. Compliance with coding and billing regulations set by government agencies like the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) in the United States.
2. Facilitating efficient claim acceptance and reimbursement processes.
3. Tracking and reporting on quality measures.

Diagnosis Related Group (DRG) and Its Impact on Hospital Reimbursement

The Diagnosis Related Group (DRG) system classifies patients or cases into standard groups based on the diagnosis and treatment required. This system prevents hospitals from providing unnecessary services for additional monetary gain and encourages cost-effective, high-quality care.

The impact of DRG on hospital reimbursement includes:

1. Predictability: The standardized payment method simplifies financial planning and makes it more predictable.
2. Incentives for Efficiency: Since each DRG has a fixed payment, hospitals are incentivized to manage resources efficiently and avoid unnecessary procedures to stay within payment limits.
3. Cost Control: Fixed payment terms encourage hospitals to operate cost-effectively, reducing unnecessary hospital stays and other expenses.

Given the modern healthcare industry’s dependence on proper documentation, having an effective CDI workflow in place is less a matter of luxury and more so a matter of operational hygiene. Organizations with effective CDI frameworks have fewer claims denials, receive payments more promptly, are at a lower risk of noncompliance, and deliver higher-quality care to their patients — with less of a burden on their providers. 

eFax delivers intelligent healthcare solutions that can aid your organization’s CDI efforts. One of our tools is Clarity CD, an interoperability solution that’s designed to securely facilitate patient data exchanges across multiple platforms, making it easier to shore up the gaps in your CDI efforts. We offer many other tools that are designed to ensure compliance and improve profitability, all while elevating patient care, so request a demo of our products today.

The Growing Demand for CDI in Improving Healthcare Quality

The demand for accurate and complete clinical documentation is growing. As a result, the role of Clinical Documentation Improvement (CDI) in the healthcare industry is becoming increasingly important. Here’s why CDIs are essential in healthcare:

• Proper documentation of a patient’s information,
• Accurate data that helps hospitals comply with policies and regulations
• Cost savings through regulatory compliance, reducing fines and non-compliance penalties
• Classification of medical diagnoses and procedures through coding systems

As the healthcare industry continues to evolve, CDI programs play a critical role in enhancing overall healthcare quality.

Kamran Shafii

Content Manager

The demand for timely, accurate and complete patient information has never been more critical than it is in today’s healthcare landscape. Imagine a physician needing to access a patient’s complete medical history in seconds, even if that information is spread across multiple systems. EHR integration makes that possible. By connecting platforms that don’t naturally work together, it helps providers build a more unified, efficient and secure environment for managing patient data and improving care delivery.

To understand its full value, it’s essential to start with the basics: what is EHR integration? In this guide, we’ll navigate the role of EHR integration in modern healthcare, along with common implementation challenges, key benefits and best practices. We’ll also explore how Clarity Clinical Documentation™ empowers healthcare providers to focus on what matters most: patient care, not paperwork.

Understanding EHR and Its Importance

What is an Electronic Health Record (EHR)?

An Electronic Health Record (EHR) is a digital version of a patient’s paper chart. EHRs are real-time, patient-centered records that make information available instantly and securely to authorized users. They encompass a comprehensive array of patient data, including medical history, diagnoses, medications, treatment plans, immunization dates, allergies, radiology images and laboratory test results.

EHRs are designed to enhance patient care by providing easy access to vital information and improving communication among healthcare providers. Unlike traditional paper records or Electronic Medical Records (EMRs), which are for internal use, EHRs can be shared across various healthcare settings, enabling stakeholders, including specialists, primary care physicians and nurses, to collaborate effectively and make informed decisions regarding patient care.

EHR Integration Essentials: Key Insights for Healthcare Providers

EHR integration refers to the ability of different healthcare systems, apps and platforms to share and access patient information in real-time. It enables a more comprehensive view of a patient’s medical history, helping providers coordinate care more effectively and make faster, more informed decisions. This is especially true for patients receiving care from multiple specialists.

With proper EHR data integration, records from labs, individual physicians and hospitals can all be connected, including diagnoses, test results and treatment plans. This holistic approach prevents gaps in information, reduces duplicate tests and ensures everyone involved in a patient’s care is working from the same information, no matter where they are in the healthcare system.

Why is EHR Integration Important?

To understand the full impact, it helps to look at the broader EHR integration meaning and why it matters in daily care delivery. EHR integration is crucial for several reasons:

1. Improved Patient Care: EHR integration enhances care coordination by allowing healthcare providers to access, share and synchronize patient information seamlessly. This capability leads to better-informed clinical decisions and timely interventions.
2. Increased Efficiency: Integrated EHR systems streamline workflows, reduce administrative burdens and minimize the time spent on paperwork. This efficiency allows healthcare providers to dedicate more time and resources to patient care.
3. Enhanced Accuracy: By automating data entry and reducing manual processes, EHR integration minimizes the risk of errors, ensuring that patient records are accurate and up-to-date.
4. Regulatory Compliance: EHR integration assists healthcare organizations in complying with regulatory requirements, such as those mandated by HIPAA, ensuring the confidentiality and security of patient data.
5. Better Data Management: Integrated systems facilitate real-time data exchange, enabling healthcare providers to maintain comprehensive and accurate patient records. This holistic view of patient data is essential for effective treatment planning and management.

How EHR Integration Works

EHR integration enables various EHR systems to connect, exchange and synchronize data across healthcare platforms, ensuring that patient information is consistently shared in real-time. Key components of EHR integration include:

• Interoperability: This feature ensures connectivity and communication between different systems, allowing them to function together efficiently.
• Data Exchange: Facilitates real-time sharing of patient information, which is crucial for timely decision-making and coordinated care. Data formats like HTML, XML and JSON help structure this data for consistent transmission.
• APIs (Application Programming Interfaces): APIs allow different software platforms to interact and exchange data easily, promoting a more cohesive healthcare ecosystem. For instance, REST is a common API format.
• Health Information Exchange (HIE): HIE mobilizes healthcare data across organizations, enabling broader access to critical patient information and facilitating better care coordination.

Modern EHR data integration relies on industry standards like Health Level Seven (HL7) and Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources (FHIR) to ensure accurate, secure sharing of health records across different platforms. HL7 is a common framework for data exchange and supports formats like XML and JSON using REST-based methods, making it a top choice among EHR vendors and cloud systems. FHIR uses web-based APIs to streamline communication between providers, labs and other systems. 

6 Steps to Successfully Integrate EHR Systems

Step 1: Establish Clear Objectives and Support Needs

Before beginning any EHR integration project, define exactly what you’re trying to achieve. Are you aiming to improve access to clinical data, or solve department workflow issues? Clear goals help shape technical and operational decisions later. It’s also smart to build in risk planning at this stage, meeting with IT and security teams to run through scope, support needs and “what-if” scenarios like system failures. 

Step 2: Evaluate Current Medical Systems and Workflows

Next, review your existing medical system to better understand how your objectives align with your current setup. Take inventory of your workflows, data sources and system performance. Identify legacy tools that may not work with modern data-sharing protocols like HL7. Define the desired outcomes, assess system limitations and confirm the path forward fits your operational and clinical needs. A clear picture of your environment and early evaluation support smoother integration with EHR systems.

Step 3: Choose the Right EHR System for Your Goals

With a better understanding of your current workflows, begin to evaluate potential EHR systems. An EHR platform should support safe, efficient patient data exchange and align with the long-term goals you’ve set. Focus on flexible, cloud-based EHR systems that simplify updates and allow real-time access across locations. Likewise, make sure your chosen solution supports industry standards and has a vendor with integration experience.

Key features to consider include:

• Security and Compliance: The EHR system should include strong access controls, end-to-end encryption and regular security audits. It must comply with HIPAA and other privacy standards to protect patient data and reduce legal risk.
• APIs: Choose a platform with API capabilities that allow seamless integration with labs, billing tools, remote monitoring apps and even built-in fax functionality for faster document exchange.
• Standards: Confirm that the system supports widely used healthcare standards like HL7 and FHIR. These ensure smooth, consistent data exchange between different platforms and providers.
• Healthcare Automation: Look for automation features that reduce manual entry and streamline routine tasks, such as report generation, appointment scheduling or real-time data sharing between care teams.

Step 4: Analyze Data Migration Requirements

Before connecting your chosen tools, audit your software, storage and hardware to confirm compatibility. If migrating data, back up critical records to avoid disruption. Older systems may not support popular API standards like REST, which can create EHR integration issues. So, map your data-sharing processes, flag systems that could disrupt healthcare interoperability and work with your vendor to build contingency plans for any gaps or technical risks.

Step 5: Develop an EHR System Implementation Strategy

Once the groundwork is complete, build a detailed EHR system implementation plan. Outline who does what, when tasks are due and what resources are needed to meet each milestone. Assign team roles clearly — for example, a data engineer may handle legacy system transfers while IT manages real-time system syncing. Loop in leadership, clinical staff and admin teams to collect feedback and maintain alignment throughout the process. 

Step 6: Change Management and Staff Training

Successful EHR integration solutions depend on more than just technology; they rely on people. That’s why effective change management is critical in the final stage. A clear plan helps reduce disruptions, ease staff resistance and guide teams through the transition. Make sure your vendor offers support for resolving technical issues, and keep communication open between staff and vendor contacts to address concerns quickly.

Staff training is equally important. Transitioning from paper-based or manual systems to an integrated EHR often requires new skills and workflows. Provide targeted training and resources to help teams adapt with confidence. Once the system is live, offer hands-on support to ensure users feel comfortable with core features, processes and tools.

Overcoming Common EHR Integration Challenges

Integrating EHR systems can bring tangible benefits, but it also comes with real challenges that healthcare organizations must plan for and manage. From security to staff resistance, here are some of the most common EHR integration challenges, complete with tips to address them.

• Data Security: Validate that your EHR solutions follow HIPAA rules and include encryption, access controls and compliance with standards like HITRUST or NIST. For example, eFax Unite is a HIPAA-compliant, HITRUST-certified tool built to support secure EHR data integration.
• Legacy Systems: Outdated tools can block integration with EHR systems. When upgrades aren’t possible, use custom interfaces and ensure support for HL7, FHIR or REST-based APIs.
• Data Complexity: When merging records from different sources, teams often face large volumes of unstructured data. Work with clinical experts and analysts to identify which data is essential for care delivery and avoid overloading the system with unnecessary information.
• Workflow Disruptions: Integration efforts may temporarily interrupt clinical services. Plan ahead to avoid downtime, communicate migration schedules early and prepare backup processes to keep services running smoothly.
• Cost Barriers: EHR integration costs vary. Cloud platforms like eFax Unite lower up-front expenses and scale with your needs — no hardware required.
• Resistance to Change: Staff may be hesitant to adopt new systems. Involve them early, explain how the changes will help and provide thorough training and support. 

5 Proven Best Practices for Effective EHR Integration

To avoid common setbacks and support long-term success, healthcare organizations should follow these proven EHR integration best practices.

• Data Management: Implement robust data governance practices to maintain the quality, security and integrity of data throughout the EHR integration process.
• Patient Consent: Ensure that patient data is shared only with appropriate consent, complying with privacy laws like HIPAA. Clear communication with patients about data usage fosters trust and transparency.
• Health Data Standards: Adhere to established standards such as HL7 and FHIR to ensure reliable data exchange and interoperability between systems. This adherence facilitates smoother integration processes and enhances overall system performance.
• Training and Support: Provide comprehensive staff training to ensure they understand how to utilize integrated EHR systems effectively. Ongoing support can help address any challenges that arise during the transition to integrated workflows.
• Continuous Evaluation: Regularly evaluate the effectiveness of EHR integration processes and technologies. Collect feedback from users to identify areas for improvement and ensure that the system continues to meet the needs of healthcare providers and patients alike.

How EHR Integration is Transforming

As modern healthcare demands smarter systems and faster decision-making, following EHR integration best practices is only part of the solution. To go a step further, healthcare organizations can turn to advanced technologies that simplify complex workflows. Clarity CD stands out as a solution to enhance the efficiency of EHR integration, especially in managing the clinical documentation fax process.

Why Clarity CD is Essential for Healthcare EHR Systems

One of the significant challenges healthcare organizations face is managing unstructured medical data, particularly faxes and paper records. Clarity CD addresses this issue by transforming unstructured documents into organized and actionable data that is compatible with EHRs.

1. Automated Data Extraction

Clarity CD leverages natural language processing and machine learning techniques to automate the extraction of essential patient data from unstructured documents. By converting faxes into structured data, Clarity CD minimizes the need for manual data entry, significantly reducing the risk of human error. This level of healthcare automation enables healthcare providers to associate eFax records with the appropriate patient files in real time, streamlining workflows and enhancing efficiency.

2. Creating Continuity of Care Documents (CCDs)

Once data is extracted, Clarity CD automatically generates a Continuity of Care Document (CCD), summarizing a patient’s health information. This document is crucial for ensuring that healthcare providers have access to comprehensive patient data during care transitions, such as referrals to specialists or hospital admissions. The CCD is then delivered along with the fax, ensuring accurate routing to the correct patient record in the EHR.

3. Handling Diverse Document Types

Clarity CD is designed to manage a wide variety of documents and images, including low-resolution faxes. Non-medical faxes, categorized as spam faxes, are automatically routed to a designated fax portal for manual review, ensuring they are never sent to the EHR. This tailored approach enhances efficiency and accuracy in managing diverse types of faxed documents, allowing healthcare organizations to focus on relevant information.

Key Benefits of Using Clarity CD in Healthcare

The advantages of Clarity CD extend beyond mere automation; they encompass a holistic approach to improving healthcare workflows and patient care:

1. Increased Productivity: Clarity CD optimizes the fax processing workflow by diminishing the need for manual data entry, reducing errors and accelerating the linking of faxes to the proper patient record. This streamlining enables healthcare organizations to operate more efficiently and effectively.
2. Enhanced Clinical Outcomes: With the integration of Clarity CD into EHR systems, healthcare organizations can significantly improve clinical outcomes. Accurate and timely access to patient information allows providers to make better-informed decisions, leading to more effective treatments and improved patient health. The reduction of errors contributes to enhanced patient safety, as healthcare providers can rely on the accuracy of the information available.
3. Focus on High-Value Tasks: By freeing clinical resources from tedious paperwork, Clarity CD allows healthcare providers to concentrate on high-priority patient care issues. This focus on meaningful interactions rather than administrative tasks fosters a more patient-centered approach to healthcare.
4. Better Regulatory Compliance: Clarity CD contributes to higher regulatory compliance due to fewer errors in highly regulated areas. The automation of data extraction and processing ensures that healthcare organizations can meet necessary standards while reducing the administrative burden associated with compliance.
5. Higher Patient and Provider Satisfaction: Ultimately, integrating Clarity CD into healthcare workflows results in faster, more accurate information delivery, leading to improved patient and provider satisfaction. The efficient processing of medical records translates into better customer service, fostering trust and loyalty among patients.

Learn More About Clarity CD

EHR integration is transforming modern healthcare by enabling seamless data exchange and significantly improving patient care. The integration of advanced solutions like Clarity CD simplifies the process of managing medical record faxes, making it faster, more accurate and more productive. By addressing challenges like unstructured data and supporting smoother workflows, Clarity CD helps healthcare organizations fully realize the benefits of integrated EHR systems.

A clear understanding of EHR integration empowers healthcare organizations to adopt the right tools, follow best practices and make smarter decisions that lead to better care. As technology and patient needs continue to evolve, staying informed and proactive is key to building more connected, efficient and resilient healthcare systems.

Frequently Asked Questions

Kamran Shafii

Content Manager

Do you trust your virtual assistant program with sensitive patient data or personal information? Here’s why you shouldn’t.

Smart speakers are perhaps the fastest-growing trend in the tech world. These single-unit wireless speakers or soundbars built with artificial intelligence (AI) come from Amazon, Apple, Google, Microsoft and Samsung (with more brands to hit the market soon).

Though originally intended for home use, smart speakers have gradually edged their way into medical offices. For this reason, it’s a natural progression that physicians and healthcare professionals will be enticed to use them for the convenience of note taking, web research, or even accessing medical records.

That could be a colossal mistake.

Virtual assistant programs like Alexa, Siri, Google Assistant, Cortana and Bixby are not in compliance with the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) – at the time of this post. Hopefully, this will change in the near future, but for now, it’s critical to know that using these devices in a medical organization has serious data security risks.
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Even within the short span of time that smart speakers have been commercially available, there are already many examples of the technology being implemented in hospital settings.
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For example, some hospitals are experimenting with ways to use Alexa to help surgeons comply with a safety checklist before a procedure or offer Alexa apps that provide instructions patients can use at home. In fact, voice-activated patient tools have been rolled out in large health systems such as the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, MN, Northwell Health in New York and Carolinas HealthCare System in Charlotte, NC. Uses range from allowing users to access common topics related to first aid, to finding the nearest urgent care center and wait times.
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These kinds of voice-activated tools may eventually become one of the essential ways patients deal with doctors and hospitals, as well as schedule appointments, access and update personal medical records, or refill prescriptions. From the hospital and doctor’s perspective, they might enable providers to more closely monitor patients at home, such as activation tools used for medication reminders.
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Taking it a step further, smart speakers will most likely end up in patient rooms, where voice commands will operate televisions and other appliances, forward patient requests, and notifications to mobile devices used by doctors and nurses. Smart speakers may become integrated with building management system platforms, where voice control can adjust lighting levels and window blinds. These smart speakers could free up nurses and other staff, allowing them to spend less time running tedious, non-medical errands, and freeing them to spend more time on issues requiring actual medical expertise.
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However, while there is great potential for positive impact of the technology, the issue is that still it needs additional advancements and protection to ensure that sensitive patient data is kept safe. Failure on the part of a staff member to secure medical record data could cost an organization hundreds of thousands of dollars, as well as supply cyber-criminals with an opportunity to commit identity theft.
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Perhaps even more concerning is the increasingly creative ways cybercriminals are hacking and stealing data, particularly in the healthcare industry. Contrary to popular belief, digital devices like smart speakers are not immune to hacking. In fact, as reported in Wired recently, a group of Chinese hackers developed a technique for hijacking Amazon’s voice assistant gadget. Although Amazon has pushed out security fixes, it highlights the fact that in the age of the Internet of Things, nothing is ever 100% safe from hacking.
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As was reported by NBC News, Candid Wueest, Symantec’s principal threat researcher, explained: “Someone could hack into these devices remotely and turn them into a listening device. Some of them even come with cameras, so they could see what you’re doing.”
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Healthcare presents specific challenges related to HIPAA compliance for the security of patient data. The current structure of most smart speaker’s architecture doesn’t align with HIPAA compliance, particularly in terms of access of personal health information (PHI). For example, a key challenge for Alexa is that they may not only transmit PHI to a user, but might also collect data through speech-to-text. The question then is how to prevent unauthorized access to that data, and whether HIPAA requirements for those devices be met and audited for compliance. In fact, this is a core task of the new Alexa health and wellness team, according to a recent CNBC article.
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So while it might be tempting to bring an Amazon Echo, Google Home or HomePod to the office, until they become fully compliant, to do so would be risking HIPAA violations. Until such time that smart speaker technology has developed new advances that meet stringent compliance regulations, it would be better to use your smart speakers for the uses in which they were originally designed.

Kamran Shafii

Content Manager

Most everyone would agree that welcoming in a new year provides hope, but as COVID-19 continues to bring about lasting ramifications for the healthcare industry, it continues to shed a light on the importance of continuity of care. As providers treat and manage the care of those impacted by the virus coupled with vaccination planning, improving healthcare information exchange empowers physicians, care coordinators and health insurance companies to make informed clinical decisions at the point of care.

To help the industry meet this critical need, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) recently proposed a new rule aimed at streamlining prior authorization processes to help reduce provider and patient burden while promoting patient’s electronic access to health information. According to information released by CMS, this proposed rule builds on the CMS Interoperability and Patient Access final rule and would place new requirements on Medicaid and CHIP managed care plans, state Medicaid and CHIP fee-for-service programs, and Qualified Health Plans (QHP) issuers on the Federally-facilitated Exchanges (FFEs) to improve the electronic exchange of health care data, and streamline processes related to prior authorization. The CMS fact sheet goes on to explain how this proposed rule would require increased patient electronic access to their health care information and would improve the electronic exchange of health information among payers, providers, and patients. Together, these policies would play a key role in reducing overall payer and provider burden and improving patient access to health information.Following the initial release of this proposed new rule in December of last year, CMS included several requests for information (RFIs) to support future rulemaking or other initiatives – one which pertained to reducing the use of facsimile (fax) technology across programs. In response, Consensus, Inc. – the company behind eFax Corporate® –  took the opportunity to address this RFI through the submission of a formal comment letter to CMS, explaining the significance of Digital Cloud Fax Technology (DCFT) to the larger drive toward total interoperability. It was critical to offer these insights as a means of voicing our concern as to how the broad category of “facsimile (fax) technology” may unintentionally impact the delivery of care for many providers who use DCFT to exchange patient information, order medications, and receive test results from labs.

Digital Cloud Fax Technology’s Impact

• Secure, paperless, cost effective and proven way for providers, payers and ancillary services to share documents and records
• HIPAA-compliant
• Integrates with existing EHR technology
• Falls under the HIMSS category of “foundational interoperability”
• Critical technology for rural healthcare organizations and financially challenged urban clinics

It must be stated, Consensus supports efforts to improve interoperability and promote the electronic exchange of healthcare data, including giving patients and providers access to prior authorization information to better manage care while reducing the burden on the healthcare system. With policy changes like this latest CMS proposed rule set to improve patient access and advance electronic data exchange, the days of the physical, paper-based fax machine are clearly numbered. So, while we agree with CMS’s desire to remove paper faxing from the process of data exchange, we believe that CMS failed to recognize the use of HIPAA compliant Digital Cloud Fax APIs, which serve an easy interoperable and integrated solution for secure document exchange for patient data today within process workflows and significantly easing the burden on the providers required to comply with any new rules.

We also expressed how there are unique circumstances that might present a challenge to meet the proposed compliance date, including resource challenges, funding, existing system incompatibility and lack of reliable core infrastructure – especially in rural settings. Depending on when the final rule is published in relation to a state’s budget process and timeline some states may not be able to secure the needed funds in time to both develop and execute implementation of the API requirements by the proposed compliance date. Some areas may have difficulty in finding needed IT resources for the development work.

Finally, our letter stressed how this accelerated comment period is unusual for such a significant proposal. Which is why we requested that CMS and ONC extend the comment period to a minimum of 60 days after publication in the Federal Register so the potential impacts of the proposed changes can be better evaluated, and a greater number of comprehensive and thoughtful comments can be considered. 

What we all must understand is that fax doesn’t necessarily lump cloud faxing technology in with the paper fax machine – it is a protocol. Digital Cloud Faxing Technology is secure, HIPAA compliant and can certainly be interactive. Fax is a known quantity for being able to move information from one point to another securely privately and with a high degree of reliability and is pervasive among providers of all kinds. As the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) works to meet the goal they set of achieving total interoperability by 2024, Consensus looks to align with the goals of CMS to eliminate paper, increase security and facilitate electronic transactions. Digital cloud fax technology is a natural fit for meeting those goals while presenting information in a way that providers and payers in all settings and locations are accustomed.Our letter, in its entirety, can be viewed here: https://beta.regulations.gov/comment/CMS-2020-0157-0058

Kamran Shafii

Content Manager

This past December, the Office for Civil Rights (OCR) at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) announced proposed changes to the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) Privacy Rule. These proposed modifications to the rule would help support patient engagement and remove barriers to coordinated care as well as reduce regulatory burdens on the health care industry.

This news from HHS set the stage for a timely webinar co-sponsored by eFax Corporate and the Electronic Healthcare Network Accreditation Commission (EHNAC) titled HIPAA in 2021: HHS Proposed Changes to Modify Privacy Rule and its Impact on Covered Entities.

Hosted by ANSWERS Media, the virtual discussion was led by two leading privacy and security experts in the healthcare sphere – Brad Spannbauer, Consensus’s VP of software implementation, and professional services and Lee Barrett, executive director and CEO of EHNAC. Both participants each brought diverse knowledge and opinions on the proposed changes to the HIPAA Privacy Rule, the potential effects it might have on providers and the patients they care for, along with any provisions that may need to be implemented once the rule is finalized.

Experts discuss overview and ramifications of key provisions outlined in the rule

The current timeline of the Proposed Rule and the release of Final Rule. The Proposed Rule was officially issued on December 10, 2020 and was published by NPRM in the Federal Register on January 22, 2021. Comments are open until March 22, 2021, and Spannbauer encouraged listeners to take part and leave their thoughts. He went on to inform attendees that it takes approximately 90 days after comments close for a rule to catch, and covered entities will have 180 days to implement the results.

The impact of COVID-19. According to Barrett, some of what has happened with the Privacy Rule goes back to the beginning of the pandemic. The Office for Civil Rights established bulletins and guidance in February of 2020, the focus is trying to minimize the impact on fines and penalties that could be levied throughout by the OCR. Overall, Barrett believes the objective was to increase information sharing amongst a variety of entities while also focusing on good faith efforts of covered entities and business associates regarding how patient information would be shared.  

Telehealth. We saw an astounding rise in telehealth practice during the pandemic. Telehealth was a key component in healthcare because patients were not making appointments or visiting their primary care physicians. Smartphone applications became a link between various organizations, trying to make it easy for both patients and providers no matter the diagnosis or treatment plan. The OCR will not be imposing HIPAA penalties against healthcare providers for noncompliance in connection with the good faith provision of telehealth using these remote communication technologies. It has been outlined that covered providers can utilize apps such as FaceTime or Skype, but are unable to use Facebook Live, TikTok, or Twitch when providing telehealth.

Guidance on disclosures to law enforcement, first responders, public health authorities. This will identify existing HIPAA Privacy Rule permissions and provide examples for when a covered entity may disclose PHI about individuals without their HIPAA authorization. If an individual was in an emergency situation where treatment was needed, a first responder was potentially at risk for infection, or any information would prevent or lessen a serious threat then the absolute minimum bit of information would be necessary to disclose.

Modifications to the rules. These modifications protect covered entities from being subject to the minimum necessary requirement for uses by, disclosures to, or requests by a health plan or covered healthcare provider for care coordination and case management activities. Covered entities can disclose PHI to social services agencies, community-based organizations, or home and service providers. The modifications were proposed to encourage covered entities to use and disclose PHI more broadly in a variety of circumstances, which allows for the broad sharing of information in the midst of emergencies.

A new administration brings change

Each administration brings about new changes, and the Biden Administration will be no different. Barrett discussed the vast background in healthcare technology that the newly designated head of ONC Micky Tripathi, will bring to his post – including serving on The Sequoia Board of Directors and furthering FHIR initiatives in support of interoperability. He went on to note how there will also be changes to the CMS administration as many candidates are currently going through the nomination process. A select few industry experts are also going through the nomination process for the position of HHS Secretary. As leaders are selected and continue to drive efforts in the right direction, Barrett expressed how it has been stated that interoperability initiatives started under the Obama Administration will continue under the Biden Administration.

HIPAA Safe Harbor Law

The webinar also touched on the Safe Harbor Law, which amends the HIPAA HITECH Act and requires HHS to focus on incentivizing organizations to promulgate best practice security. According to Barrett, the goal of this law is to “not penalize those organizations that may have been impacted by a cyberattack, ransomware or other.” He went on to say how choosing not to seek third-party accreditation leaves the impacted organizations subject to an audit by OCR as well as certain fines and penalties due to their lack of proper cyber hygiene.

Now you know, but what should you do to prepare for the Final Rule?

Barrett first advised that all covered entities take time to review their current policies and procedures to determine what revisions need to be made ahead of the Final Rule approval. Covered entities shouldn’t wait to start making provisions on what those revisions might be. Second, all covered entities should begin to look at their organizations’ training processes. Should the Final Rule be approved, where do training tactics need to be amended to meet the new changes? For example, front office staff members should be aware of all forms that patients might have completed and submitted previously as patients could come in and ask to review their PHI on the spot. They might even ask for their records to be sent to another entity. If this Rule is implemented, the timing of these events will go from 30 to 15 days.

Spannbauer concluded the webinar by telling attendees how a majority of these changes will eliminate burdens for covered entities and should be embraced as they will not only make life a little easier for those they impact but, most importantly, because they support patient care.

Watch the complete webinar: HIPAA in 2021: HHS Proposed Changes to Modify Privacy Rule and its Impact on Covered Entities

Kamran Shafii

Content Manager

Despite attempts to eliminate the fax machine in healthcare, it continues to be relied upon by many providers. Not only is faxing commonplace in many healthcare organizations throughout the country, but the use of traditional fax for data exchange continues to rise, according to the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology’s (ONC) State of Interoperability among U.S. Non-federal Acute Care Hospitals in 2018 Report, released in March 2020.

In a recent article published in Healthcare IT Today, Consensus’s John Nebergall discusses how, although many healthcare organizations still rely on fax machines as their primary way to send patient information to other providers external to their network, cloud fax technology is also on the rise:

According to the ONC, from 2017 to 2018, the use of eFax to send and receive care records increased 3% and 7%, respectively.

“eFax, or cloud faxing as it’s more commonly called, is one of the best protocols for rapid, reliable and scalable data transfer,” stated John Nebergall, Senior Vice President and General Manager of Cloud Faxing at Consensus. “Cloud faxing means having a fully electronic workflow. There is no paper, no physical fax machine, yet it uses tried-and-true fax protocols.”

With a traditional fax machine, patient information would need to be printed from the EHR, walked over to the fax machine and sent through, page by agonizing page. Once confirmation the fax was received properly, the paper record would need to be shredded in order to protect patient privacy. Babysitting this entire process is a tremendous waste of precious healthcare resources.

Cloud faxing eliminates all of this. With the click of a button, information from an EHR (and most other hospital systems) can be turned into a fax transmission and sent to the recipient via the Internet. “It’s quick, convenient and secure” said Nebergall.Read the full article in Healthcare IT Today.

Kamran Shafii

Content Manager

In the last few years, HIPAA’s regulators and auditors have become more aggressive in finding and penalizing instances in which Covered Entities and their Business Associates fail to protect the electronic protected health information (ePHI) in their care. And chances are, you’ve gotten the message: It is your healthcare organization’s legal responsibility to safeguard at all times the private patient data under your charge.

But even if you have already taken many of the necessary steps to build a HIPAA compliant IT infrastructure, there are almost certainly several vulnerabilities in your organization’s ePHI-security processes, typical digital stops that your ePHI makes along its journey to recipients or to your long-term secure archiving and storage. Most IT teams forget to secure or scrub their ePHI from these hiding places.

Here are 8 of the top ePHI vulnerable spots where even at this very moment your data might be hiding — leaving you open to noncompliance with HIPAA, exposed to cyber criminals, in jeopardy of a reputation-damaging breach, and creating many other ongoing risks to your healthcare practice or organization.

ePHI Data Leakage, and 8 Places You’ve Forgotten to Secure

1.  USB Drives

Even for a disciplined and security-conscious healthcare IT team, it’s easy to forget the USB drive and other portable media-storage and transfer devices.

But your staff might be using them for faster and more convenient exchanging of ePHI documents between colleagues or to transfer them more easily from a device in the office to, say, a device at home. For your doctors or administrative staff, this might be completely innocent — just an easier way to work. But as far as HIPAA regulators are concerned, and for the cyber thief who steals the device and all of the data on it, these innocent intentions won’t protect your patients or your organization.

The preferred approach is to not allow files to be transferred to removable media, and systems can be implemented to automatically block such attempts to copy files.  But if your staff is going to use USB drives to share and transfer ePHI, you’ll need to either insist on only company-issued drives — which you’ll equip with encryption software — and require that your employees who do use them delete all of the contents after each use.

2.  Your Staff’s Texts

Because it’s such a convenient and immediate method of communication, doctors, nurses and other health professionals often use text messaging to communicate with colleagues and patients — and this often means transmitting ePHI in an unsecure way.

There are two problems here. First, under most circumstances texting ePHI is a HIPAA violation.  In fact, according to a 2016 Healthcare IT article, HIPAA’s auditors can fine your organization up to $50,000 for each text containing ePHI.

Second, and equally important, texting ePHI can leave the data exposed to hackers, in several ways. If your staff is texting ePHI over an unsecure network — such as a WiFi hotspot in a public place — hackers can grab the data digitally. Also, what if the doctor texting ePHI with her cell phone loses that phone or has it stolen? Finally, even if your doctor remains extremely careful about how and where she texts, the ePHI data she is sending and receiving over the cellular network still remains in storage on the cellular provider’s own cloud — and there is no way of knowing either that the data is secured on the carrier’s own servers or who at the carrier’s company will be able to see it.

3.  Your Staff’s Email Accounts

Your IT department has probably developed a secure email  system that satisfies HIPAA’s requirements — using secure transmission encryption protocols and other security measures to protect data on your network’s servers, etc.

But remember that your staff probably also sends and receives work-related email, including ePHI, on their personal email accounts— such as web accounts like Gmail and Yahoo! Mail.

Often your doctors or administrative staff will do this for convenience; perhaps they’re in a location where they can’t access their corporate email. Other times they might simply forget which email program they’re using when they send a new message from their smartphone.

Whatever the reason, you should assume your employees are using their personal email accounts, often outside of your network firewall, to send and receive messages containing ePHI. So your IT team’s job here — and it’s a difficult one — will be to implement policies and provide training to steer your staff away from emailing outside the corporate system you’ve developed for work-related messages, particularly messages with ePHI.

And even secure email is only as secure as the system of the person receiving the email.  If the recipient is on a non-secure personal email system, employees should be cautioned not to send email that contains protected information.

4.  The Hard Drives of Your Copiers, Scanners and Fax Machines

When your employees scan, copy or fax physical documents containing ePHI, digital copies of those documents are saved to the hard drives of the copiers, scanners and fax machines. This is an often overlooked security vulnerability because people, even seasoned IT professionals, forget that these standard pieces of office equipment even have hard drives.

But as the healthcare educational company 4MedApproved points out, one health insurance provider was forced to pay a $1.2 million HIPAA fine for returning leased office equipment that still had stored patient records and other ePHI on the devices’ hard drives.

5.  Your Voice Files

Let’s say a patient leaves a voicemail on your organization’s phone service, or on the smartphone issued to one of your doctors (or even to that doctor’s personal mobile phone). If the patient identifies herself and gives any personal information in that voicemail — almost a certainty in a message left for a medical office or doctor — that is considered ePHI.

Furthermore, let’s say your doctors use handheld dictation systems to record patient details during or immediately after patient appointments. And further imagine that the routine for many of your doctors is simply to keep the tapes of these recordings in an unlocked cabinet or even on an open shelf in their offices. Again, these voice recordings would qualify as ePHI — and need to be protected just as any fax server or network transmission containing patient records.

Your IT team’s task here — again, a difficult one — will be to train all staff on treating these voice recordings as the HIPAA-enforced protected data they are, and to implement processes to secure this ePHI at all times, whether digitally (in the case of patient voicemails) or physically (in the case of your doctors’ own patient recordings on dictation devices).

And it goes without saying that outside medical transcription services must be HIPAA compliant and willing to sign a BAA if they will be transcribing doctors notes that contain personally identifiable information.

6.  Your Previous Electronic Medical Records System

Here’s a very common scenario in healthcare organizations today — particularly as the Affordable Care Act rules force many medical and dental practices to reconsider the records systems they are using. A doctor’s office decides to switch its Electronic Medical Records (EMR) system from, say, to NexGen.

After training its staff on the NextGen system and migrating its records over the new platform, the company will then often maintain a computer server that contains copies of all of its old records originally generated on its Cerner system. But very few of these companies will also provide adequate security for that old EMR data — even though it is still ePHI, subject to the exact same HIPAA regulations as new patient records.

Here your IT team’s responsibility will be to treat this archived data and the hardware storing it with the same level of care and security as your office’s current ePHI. That means you’ll need to maintain current usernames and passwords for authorized personnel, equip the server (and any transmissions of the data to or from that server) with encryption and other security protocols, and maintain usage logs for any access to the ePHI contained on this old server.

It’s easy to forget this data is even there. But if HIPAA auditors come knocking, you’re just as much at risk of a noncompliance fine from the ePHI stored here as you are from any other type of  violation.

7.  Your Medical Equipment’s Hard Drives

This is often another innocent oversight, but one that still leaves the healthcare organization at risk from both a data breach from cyber attackers and from landing on the wrong side of a HIPAA investigation. The CT scanner, MRI machine, dental x-ray device and other medical equipment in your office also have hard drives — and virtually all of the images and data stored on these hard drives is, by definition, ePHI.

You need to implement a process for encrypting these storage drives and regularly offloading the data to a secure server — whether that’s a cloud storage plan or an on-premises secure server that your IT team manages.

8.  Your ePHI Held by Third-Party Vendors

To function as a healthcare organization today, you almost certainly need to work with third parties, such as an after-hours answering service and a cloud provider to back up and provide disaster recovery services for your data. But these are yet more examples of places where your ePHI is residing, and where they also need protecting at all times.

Any vendor that handles your ePHI should be able to demonstrate that they understand HIPAA’s requirements and their role in securing your ePHI, and that they have developed HIPAA compliant processes to secure your data at all times.

Make Your ePHI Faxes Secure and HIPAA Compliant

As we noted in ePHI vulnerability #4 above, your data is probably residing unsecured on the hard drives of your office’s copiers and fax machines. This is yet one more reason to upgrade your infrastructure from standard desktop fax machines or fax servers to a cloud fax model built specifically for businesses that need to transmit highly sensitive material by fax.

A pioneer in cloud faxing 20 years, eFax Corporate® is the world’s leading cloud fax partner for enterprises, and the most trusted provider of digital faxing services to the most heavily regulated industries — including healthcare.

Our HIPAA compliant fax solution employs the most advanced security and encryption protocols available for faxes in transit over the Internet. Additionally, we use the most sophisticated security protocols for a business’s faxes at rest — in storage online after they have been either sent or received. That is why eFax Corporate is the cloud faxing solution preferred by the majority of Fortune 500 corporations.

Kamran Shafii

Content Manager

One reason the healthcare industry remains far from its goal of achieving ubiquitous interoperability is that many health organizations still find at least some of the technologies involved too costly or difficult to implement. If they haven’t already done so, a rural hospital or small physicians’ practice might view implementing an EHR as a time-consuming and resource-draining initiative. For larger providers, setting up APIs or moving to data-standardization protocols like FHIR 4 might also seem too disruptive to undertake. These organizations’ IT teams are busy dealing with today’s emergencies, after all.

But there is one technology that represents a significant step toward digital interoperability—and any healthcare organization can implement it almost immediately. In fact, it’s simply a modernized version of a data transmission protocol that health providers have been using for decades. It’s digital advantage of cloud faxing.

Here’s how cloud fax can provide a health organization with all of the benefits of faxing—including increased interoperability—while avoiding the many downsides of a traditional fax infrastructure.

3 ways cloud fax boosts interoperability… without the baggage of legacy faxing

1. It leverages the fact that everyone already has fax technology.

Even in 2020, faxing remains one of the most widely used methods of exchanging patient records and related documents. Nearly every practice, clinic, hospital, pharmacy, lab, payer, and other entity in the healthcare ecosystem has a fax machine and a dedicated fax number—and everyone is familiar with the technology. That’s why faxing still accounts for 75% of all patient data exchange.

The widespread use of faxing in healthcare should qualify it as a check mark on a provider’s digital interoperability to-do list. But the goal of interoperability is to make exchanging patient data faster and easier for any healthcare entity. And as anyone learns when they’re forced to use the traditional method—printing out documents, feeding them into a fax machine, dialing a phone number, waiting for all pages to feed through the machine, filing the pages and transmission receipt—paper faxing is one of the slowest and least efficient means of sending and receiving documents.

Cloud fax combines the fax’s interoperability with the efficiency of an online solution. With cloud faxing, by contrast, an organization uses a virtual fax number to send or receive patient documents digitally—via a highly secure email interface or website. There is no need for printing, scanning, dialing, waiting, filing, or taking any of the other manual steps required to complete an analog fax transmission. Even retrieving these documents later is far more efficient with cloud fax solution, which archives all fax data and lets users search for it anytime by date, name, tags, etc.

In other words, cloud fax leverages the ubiquity of faxing—the fact that every healthcare provider already has a fax number and uses faxing in its daily operations—while making the entire process faster, more secure, and more efficient.

2. It fills in the data-exchange gaps for organizations without an EHR.

Although most healthcare organizations have adopted EHR systems, many—particularly those in smaller, rural, and medically underserved communities—have not. This is partly due to the fact that many of these smaller providers fell through the cracks of the government’s Meaningful Use incentive programs to encourage electronic-records adoption. Additionally, these smaller entities simply have less of a budget to upgrade to newer technologies. But all of these budget-strapped healthcare organizations are familiar with faxing and likely use the protocol every day to send and receive patient documents.

Cloud fax helps fill this interoperability gap. With a cloud fax solution, these underrepresented healthcare entities can have the means to efficiently and affordably transmit a high volume of patient records and documents via fax. And unlike the purchase, implementation, and staff training of an entirely new technology like an EHR, rolling out a digital fax solution takes very little time or effort on the part of the company’s IT staff—and almost no time for the medical and administrative staff to learn to use.

3. It encourages data exchange by making the process more compliant with HIPAA.

Traditional faxing leaves a healthcare covered entity vulnerable to many compliance risks. Faxes sent to the wrong number, patient records left sitting on an office fax machine, failure to securely file ePHI faxes after receiving or sending the hardcopies—these can all constitute regulatory violations.

Cloud fax significantly increases a covered entity’s ability to meet HIPAA standards. With a cloud fax solution, a healthcare organization won’t face any of the HIPAA risks common in a legacy fax environment. In this way, cloud faxing encourages patient data exchange by making it safer for covered entities to engage in high-volume faxing of patient data without the concerns or additional precautions needed to safeguard the organization from regulatory violations.

An organization can implement cloud fax immediately

For a healthcare organization trying to move toward digital interoperability, one final advantage of cloud faxing is that it can be rolled out right away.

When the industry talks about digital maturity roadmaps, data standardization, and new interoperability applications, many healthcare providers envision costly projects that divert important resources and disrupt the organization’s normal operations. With cloud fax, though, there are no such expensive or disruptive implementations—just an easy rollout of an intuitive cloud technology that everyone in the organization will grasp almost immediately.

Kamran Shafii

Content Manager