The recent MUSE Inspire Conference, held from May 27-30 in Dallas, Texas, was a resounding success. This year’s event promoted insightful conversations, showcased groundbreaking solutions, and fostered valuable connections within the MEDITECH community. It was truly inspiring to witness the collective commitment to transforming healthcare delivery and improving patient outcomes.

A cornerstone of the MUSE Conference each year is the Heart of MUSE initiative, and once again, we were proud to be a sponsor. This program embodies MUSE leaders’ dedication to giving back and empowering attendees to support a local charity in the host city. Through the purchase of a special collector’s pin, attendees contribute directly to this cause, with Consensus proudly matching all donations to amplify the impact.

The 2025 Heart of MUSE recipient was GRACE, an organization that provides support and resources for families in the midst of job loss, chronic low income or other recent emergencies. Each year, GRACE helps an average of 10,000 individuals in the Greater Northeast Tarrant County reach self-sufficiency by providing food, clothing, shelter, education and medical care services through our programs.

The GRACE Community Clinic is the medical home for uninsured families that do not have access to traditional health care. The clinic offers the following healthcare services: routine Family Practice, Internal Medicine, Endocrinology, Cardiology, Well Woman, and Chiropractic Care. We hold monthly preventative care and education opportunities such as diabetes, pre-diabetes, self-breast exam training, and nutrition classes.

“We are incredibly grateful for the generous contributions from the MUSE attendees and Consensus Cloud Solutions,” said Rebecca Cox, CEO of GRACE. “This donation directly enables us to continue providing vital food, housing security, healthcare, and support to families in Northeast Tarrant County, helping them secure a path to self-sufficiency. Partnerships like this truly make a difference in our community.”

At Consensus, our belief in the power of community is deeply intertwined with our mission to make a positive impact on healthcare. This year, on the final day of the conference, Consensus matched all attendee donations. We were honored to present GRACE with a check for $3,000 at the closing ceremony, a testament to the collective generosity of the MEDITECH community.

Take a look back at past years’ Heart of MUSE recipients, and learn more about the program: Heart of MUSE Over the Years

Thank you to everyone who donated and showed their support!

Christine Duval

Director, Corporate Content and Communications Strategy

Artificial intelligence (AI) emerged as the star of the show at HIMSS earlier this year. It was impossible to ignore the influence of AI on every emerging tool and solution touted at the show as HIMSS CEO Hal Wolf jokingly challenged attendees to find 10 booths on the exhibit floor that didn’t mention AI. 

The dialogue around AI has evolved over the past few years. Three years ago, the introduction of AI as an unproven concept in healthcare put many providers on guard. The following year, we saw more organizations develop strategies for harnessing the power of AI, however, real use cases hadn’t emerged yet. Now, conversations around AI have shifted to measurable examples with specific KPIs that showcase how these tools are solving real-world problems in healthcare. 

Leveraging AI to enhance efficiencies

Now that we’re seeing more agreed-upon use cases of how AI is solving some of healthcare’s biggest problems, the pace of innovation is pushing technology vendors to advance beyond their core product to create more efficiencies with AI. Many of the big players whose offerings rested on a single solution now understand they must weave AI into their toolset if they want to even be at parity with the AI message. To stand apart from the crowd, vendors need to have specific use cases and examples of how results are achieved. 

AI is no longer a competitive differentiator in itself. Instead, stakeholders are now looking for real results from the AI tools they use. Financial pressures are prompting leaders to tighten their focus on ROI: Only a quarter of organizations are confident in their financial readiness to achieve their strategic objectives over the next 12 months, according to the September 2024 HIMSS executive leadership report, “Targeting the Biggest Bang for the Buck.“  Today, 58% of organizations either somewhat or strongly agree that their organization has identified specific use cases for AI around care delivery and outcomes, a March 2025 HIMSS report, “5 Keys to Successful Digital Health Transformation,” found.

Recent research by McKinsey & Company revealed that 30% of healthcare’s administrative tasks could be streamlined by AI. The impact: $130 billion in potential savings for the industry. Solutions presented at HIMSS showcased how AI can accelerate prior authorization approvals and transform unstructured data into actionable intelligence, reducing healthcare’s administrative burden. That’s especially true when this intelligence is integrated and shared with established receiving end workflows. 

Intelligent data extraction is one area where health systems are making significant gains in eliminating administrative burden and waste. Our Clarity solution applies natural language processing and machine learning to extract information from faxes, scanned documents, images, and handwritten text—translating unstructured data into structured formats without manual data entry. Once the data is structured, you can apply prompt questions using generative AI to garner even more insights for actionable content. AI-powered automation solutions like these can help simplify complex tasks like document management while empowering healthcare staff to streamline efficiencies.

Embedding AI into larger toolsets

Since the investments required to roll out innovative AI tools can be cost-prohibitive, we’re seeing an influx of companies partnering with other vendors to embed white-labeled AI solutions into their product frameworks, rather than developing their own. As we noticed in recent conversations, physicians are more likely to adopt tools that integrate directly with their EHR. 

Emphasizing this tendency for simplicity, another trend I’ve seen emerge is a cry for fewer vendor partners. More and more, healthcare organizations are leaning into streamlined suites of integrated tools that offer more capabilities rather than continuing to juggle multiple platforms. 

This trend will continue to push tech vendors to expand their capabilities and develop strategic partnerships with AI-powered tools. Doing so can extend their reach beyond a single product to provide a full arsenal of solutions for today’s healthcare systems. Without an approach such as this, vendors risk being replaced.

Powering more secure solutions

Aside from AI, the other hot topic on everyone’s minds is cybersecurity. According to HIMSS’ annual survey of cybersecurity pros, three in four respondents said their organizations suffered a cyberattack in the past year, emphasizing the critical nature of protecting sensitive data. 

With healthcare data breaches becoming increasingly common and more devastating, health leaders continue to stress the importance of real-time threat monitoring and baked-in security to protect every process within a healthcare system. Data security should be a foremost concern, urging organizations to take a closer look at the tools they’re using to ensure HIPAA compliance and multi-factor authentication through every step of data exchange. For smaller hospitals, implementing advanced cybersecurity technology is prohibitive. Solutions like two-factor authentication can be achieved by using digital cloud faxing, such as eFax Corporate®, to send and receive PHI. Our eFax Corporate solution can facilitate many of the security requirements to enhance data security and reduce the impact of a cyber attack.

Moving forward

The conversations and presentations I’ve heard at this year’s biggest healthcare conferences reinforced the message we’ve been sharing at Consensus for years: Healthcare leaders need more simple, secure ways to send and receive sensitive healthcare data. 

Like it or not, despite the t-shirts we saw at HIMSS this past March urging health leaders to ditch the fax, this trustworthy tech tool is here to stay—and it’s even incorporating the latest AI innovations to go beyond the fax and modernize how we send and receive information with enhancements for easier workflow.  Even as healthcare technologies continue to advance, digital cloud fax remains a critical bridge that will connect stakeholders with the information they need to deliver patient-centered care while alleviating administrative burdens—contributing to a stronger healthcare ecosystem in the future that provides measurable results.

Bevey Miner

EVP Healthcare Strategy & Policy

Hospitals and health systems “cannot function today without embracing digital health transformation at some level,” a HIMSS analysis states. The road to digital value varies: Every healthcare organization’s digital transformation journey takes a different path, depending on their starting point, their end goals, and the resources they have available along the way. 

Yet despite the many different factors that can impact digital success, it may come as a surprise to learn that only 52% of healthcare organizations have strategies in place to guide their digital transformation, according to a recent HIMSS Market Insights survey. 

The study, comprising C-level executives and IT directors at multi-hospital systems and not-for-profit healthcare organizations, captured a snapshot of the obstacles and milestones companies are facing throughout their digital transformation journeys—revealing five common keys for the most successful initiatives. 

1. Set clear goals

Understanding the impetus for digital transformation is the first key to guiding an organization’s journey. The HIMSS survey revealed that cybersecurity and privacy regulations were the primary objectives driving digital transformation for 96% of healthcare organizations, followed closely by the goal of improving the patient experience (94%). 

This makes sense, since most digital initiatives are typically triggered by either a stick or a carrot—which is why we see regulation topping the list, forcing organizations to comply with stricter security requirements to avoid penalties or, even more daunting, mitigate the risk of a data breach. Both of these “sticks” drive digital change. 

As the industry moves toward value-based care, improving the patient experience becomes a bigger agent of change, as well, because organizations are incentivized by outcomes. The better the patient experience, the more money the hospital will receive as a reward. These financial “carrots” also play a role in guiding digital initiatives. 

A third objective cited by 90% of respondents was optimizing EHR systems for efficient documentation and information retrieval, followed by investing in scalable and reliable technology (87%) as well as interoperability and data exchange (85%). This is where pragmatic solutions like digital cloud fax, particularly when paired with AI, become essential. By automatically transforming faxes and other unstructured documents into structured data for direct EHR integration, these technologies provide fast access to accurate information for optimal patient care while minimizing administrative burdens.

At the end of the day, healthcare is a business, and decision-makers are driven by two overriding objectives from a business perspective: either driving top-line revenue or bottom-line efficiencies, as illustrated in these results. 

2. Establish a plan

If only 52% of organizations have digital transformation strategies in place, that means the other 48% don’t—either because they’re still assessing existing technologies and processes, or they haven’t yet developed a roadmap for change. 

The key to kickstarting the planning process, from our perspective, is to gain alignment between IT and the rest of the organization with a cross-functional approach. IT can’t lead the transformation alone; they need buy-in from C-suite leaders to allocate resources and input from clinical users to understand how new technologies actually fit into their workflows. Convening these disciplines early in the journey is vital to demonstrating the value of digital transformation while also eliminating the fear of change. 

3. Define success

The only way to know whether you’ve reached your destination is to establish metrics that capture baseline data and monitor progress toward your objectives. By understanding your current workflows, you can develop better solutions to streamline operations and improve outcomes. 

Your organization’s metrics for success might include: 

• Increased productivity through integrated technologies
• More efficient care coordination as a result of breaking down silos 
• Better health outcomes because providers can easily access the information they need
• Reduced costs through optimized workflows that eliminate redundancies  

Once again, these definitions of success often point back to top-line revenue or bottom-line efficiencies. 

4. Understand the challenges of digital transformation

The top challenge cited by 68% of respondents was overcoming limited budget or staff resources for implementing digital initiatives. The key to overcoming this hurdle is making deployments as simple as possible by adopting solutions that integrate with existing systems to minimize disruption, and working closely with technology vendors to ease the transition. The vendors you partner with will dictate the pace—and the ultimate success—of your digital transformation. 

The second biggest challenge identified by 56% of respondents was determining the impact and ROI of digital initiatives. If you can’t show a clear ROI, it’s nearly impossible to achieve success. Every customer we work with is looking for ROI as they evaluate digital spend, and this calculation can be difficult to prove. That’s why we go through the math with our customers to illustrate the savings they can reap by strategically leveraging existing technologies like digital cloud fax that can be easily integrated with advanced solutions. 

5. Embrace AI

The HIMSS study showed that 58% of organizations have identified specific use cases where AI can add value in care delivery and outcomes, yet two out of three organizations lack a clear AI adoption strategy aligned to their goals. This discrepancy shows how early-stage AI technology is in healthcare. Although we’re starting to see glimpses of its practical applications, it’s still hard for many organizations to calculate ROI, as illustrated in the previous point. 

Ultimately, connecting the dots between the possibility and practicality of AI—and, of course, tying it directly to profitability—will be the key to successfully executing a digital strategy that delivers the best outcomes for patients, streamlines workflows for staff, and supports data-driven decision-making throughout the organization. 

Johnny Hecker

EVP, Operations and Chief Revenue Officer

As we embark on the next chapter of the digital revolution, tech leaders are peering into their crystal balls to predict what the rest of 2025 holds in store. I foresee this to be a year of progress as we charge toward accelerated adoption of digital cloud services, embracing practical solutions to bridge gaps in tech equity while setting new standards for cloud security. 

While some skeptics may scoff at the idea of attainable tech solutions that are both equitable and secure—because these have been two of the prickliest challenges facing widespread adoption of digital cloud services, particularly in highly regulated and fragmented industries like healthcare—my forecast for the cloud is sunny. Here’s why I believe 2025 will bring data modernization to the masses, unlocking interoperability in healthcare and beyond. 

Adoption of digital cloud services will accelerate

Leading analysts believe healthcare IT teams will feel greater urgency to invest in digital cloud infrastructure given the pressures associated with rising volumes of data and the need to strengthen information sharing. Organizations like Piedmont Health System are moving to the cloud to strengthen efficiency in operations and ensure clinical data reaches the right people at the right time. In fact, Piedmont CIO Geoff Brown says the organization’s decision to implement a digital cloud fax infrastructure across Georgia’s largest health system—which expanded from 6 hospitals to 26 in a 10-year period, with 4 million faxes sent and received annually—has been a game changer during a period of accelerated growth.

“It turned out to be one of the best decisions,” Brown said during a HIMSS exhibit hall presentation. “I just can’t tell you the benefit that it has been to our workforce, to our clinics and clinician practices, to the folks in our hospitals who are caring for patients, including in our operating rooms. It has revolutionized some of the ways in which we operate.” OR staff no longer have to deal with missing documentation on the day of a procedure, the ability to track incoming faxes and integrate them with the electronic medical record has helped close gaps in critical data, Brown told HIMSS attendees. Watch the video of his presentation, “Harnessing the Power of the Cloud to Support Growth Initiatives.”

Leaders will realize that tech equity is not entirely the government’s responsibility

In a recent CHIME survey commissioned by Consensus, 50% of health IT leaders responded that they believed it’s the federal government’s responsibility to fund digital transformation for smaller facilities. Less than 30% of leaders put the onus on community grants to promote tech equity, and 12.5% said that large hospital systems should invest in their smaller partners to bridge the digital divide. But only about 30% of these providers are working one-on-one with small and post-acute care facilities to address this challenge. Most of them don’t have the funds or the IT resources to bring their counterparts up to speed. This lack of interoperability leads to breakdowns in information exchange, affecting care coordination and quality. 

We can’t wait for the federal government, or even larger healthcare partners, to close this digital divide. But we can apply AI to tools like digital cloud fax, enabling providers of all sizes to transform unstructured data into structured data that can easily be shared between systems. This pragmatic approach can drastically minimize the barriers to healthcare information exchange, leveling the digital playing field to give all stakeholders the information they need to make critical decisions.

Interoperable Secure Cloud Fax Standards will foster public confidence

To make digital cloud fax services undeniably reliable—especially in highly regulated industries like healthcare and finance—security can’t be an afterthought. Many efforts to apply data security frameworks and standards like FHIR to healthcare information exchange only exacerbate the digital divide, because not all organizations have the resources to comply. 

That’s why I support the radical work of DirectTrust to develop new Interoperable Secure Cloud Fax Standards that will empower fax-dependent industries to leverage the benefits of interoperability without disruptive changes to existing infrastructures or workflows. As chair of the Consensus Body developing these standards, I urge other leaders in healthcare, financial services and telecommunications to join our efforts to advance fax in regulated industries, ensuring that no one is left out of the digital revolution. Learn more about this initiative in my recent podcast interview on “The Tate Chronicles”.

Jeffrey Sullivan

CTO

When Piedmont Health took a supercharged path to growth, increasing from six hospitals to 26 in a 10-year period, the health system’s approach to bringing new facilities into the fold could be summed up in six words: “Integrate fast. Then, bring the technology.” A phased strategy to technology adoption during a rapid period of growth made sense, but there was much to consider. After all, continuity of care and operations depends on timely access to information. Scaling quickly and ensuring disparate technology systems could speak to each other was vital.

It’s an area where Geoff Brown, CIO at Piedmont, found value from implementing a technology that holds more potential for innovation than most health systems realize: digital cloud fax.

For Piedmont, the decision to move more than 4 million annual faxes to the cloud through a phased implementation across the health system’s 2,000 facilities created economies of scale for the organization during a period of high growth. It also improved reliability of information access and exchange while delivering a strong return on investment.

Cloud Fax as a Tool for Innovation

With more than 2,000 facilities and 4.5 million patients a year, Piedmont’s decision to partner with Consensus Cloud Solutions to replace existing on premise fax servers with a cloud infrastructure “turned out to be one of the best decisions we’ve ever made,” Brown said. “This has really revolutionized the way we operate,” Brown told attendees at HIMSS during a presentation at Consensus’ booth.

Piedmont’s legacy fax infrastructure, reliant on analog lines and telecommunications providers, struggled to handle peak fax volumes, making timely fax processing a challenge. Before migrating to cloud fax, Piedmont often faced challenges with missing orders and gaps in patient information. Additionally, staff would spend hours on the phone, tracking down orders or responding to requests for data. When data came in as faxed documents, staff would scan the PDFs and then index the information so it could be searched for and retrieved later. “We could no longer afford to manage the data in that way,” Brown said. “Imagine the number of hours it would take our clinical teams…we couldn’t operationalize this work.”

The move to cloud-based information exchange—made possible through digital cloud fax—provided a pathway for more scalable, secure, and reliable data exchange. It also reduced the administrative burden associated with integrating patient information into the EHR, it happened automatically when the faxes came in.

“I just can’t tell you the benefit this has provided for our workforce and our clinical practices,” Brown emphasized. Piedmont’s team of approximately 47,000 employees now have instant access to incoming information. This is particularly crucial for its operating room staff who no longer face delays due to missing faxed paperwork; instead, they find the necessary documentation embedded directly in the patient record, allowing them to begin cases promptly with all relevant information at hand.

One added, critical benefit: greater security controls over sensitive information. Consensus’ digital cloud fax solution, eFax Corporate®, is HITRUST certified and meets all necessary compliance requirements.

Leaning into the Power of the Cloud and AI: What’s Next for Piedmont

For large health systems like Piedmont, the application of intelligent data extraction powered by AI is transforming information exchange and the management of unstructured data, including faxes. “By putting this workflow in place, we can elevate our services to a new level, freeing up resources to deliver faster and better support to our physician community, our clinical teams, and, most importantly, the patients who depend on us for timely access to their documents.“

Piedmont is actively exploring how Consensus’ AI technology, Clarity, can automate the processing of the millions of documents handled by their Health Information Management (HIM) team. “I’m excited, I can’t imagine all the benefits that may be realized in the future that  we are not mindful of right now”

Discover the difference that cloud migration could make for your healthcare organization. Contact us to learn more.

Jeffrey Sullivan

CTO

From an antiquated technology that predated telephones to one of the most secure and compliant modes of modern, intelligent data exchange, fax has come a long way over the past two centuries. Despite criticism from stakeholders who don’t understand healthcare’s overreliance on this platform, fax is still the most commonly used technology in this industry — at least 70% of healthcare providers still exchange medical information via fax.

Many of these fax-detractors, who see this tool as an obstacle to seamless data interoperability, often ignore that fax is sometimes the only and best option for smaller healthcare organizations with limited resources like post-acute care facilities, substance use disorder clinics, birthing centers, and others that aren’t as far along in their digital journey.

By simply recognizing the essential role that fax still serves in many of these facilities, we can start to appreciate the evolution that this technology has undergone as it has transformed from a clunky, paper-based system into an advanced digital solution that provides a vital conduit for securely and intelligently exchanging health information today.

The evolution of modern fax

Despite the evolution of fax technology from its 1843 mechanical origins, the concept of a paper-based desktop fax machine continues to prevail, detracting from the full potential of today’s digital solutions. The mere mention of “fax” often elicits eye-rolls and derisive comments, conjuring images of clunky machines and archaic processes. However, this negativity ignores the significant evolution fax technology has undergone in its 180-year history — a journey of advancement that virtually every other technology, from the automobile to the telephone, has also embarked on.

At HIMSS this year, a few folks playfully rallied against fax, distributing t-shirts that advocated for its demise. Yet, this lighthearted dismissal continues to promote a fundamental misunderstanding of modern fax capabilities. The reality is, fax solutions are far removed from their antiquated predecessors. This trust-worthy tech tool is here to stay, as demonstrated by other vendors across the exhibit hall floor showcasing its enhanced capabilities through artificial intelligence (AI) integration. It’s time to retire the outdated stereotypes and recognize fax for what it is: a continuously evolving and critical communication method.

Now, the newest generation of present-day digital cloud fax solutions incorporate AI like natural language processing (NLP) and machine learning (ML) to achieve intelligent data extraction, unlocking the ability to pull information from faxes as well as scanned images, PDFs, and even handwritten text. This advanced technology is revolutionizing the way businesses manage and process document workflows and tackling major challenges in the healthcare industry: transforming unstructured data into actionable intelligence to reduce manual effort, accelerate referral and billing processes, and empower healthcare providers to speed up care delivery.

The superpowers of digital fax

The vast majority of healthcare data is unstructured, with 80% of medical information buried in formats that aren’t machine readable or computable — hindering clinicians from analyzing or even accessing vital details. Without the ability to transform this information into standardized, structured data, healthcare organizations will wrestle with incomplete views of the patients they treat, impeding the delivery of both communication and care.

Thanks to AI-powered fax innovation, health systems can use these advanced tools to automatically extract data from images, scans, and handwritten notes, transforming unstructured information into structured data. This powerful tool delivers information directly into clinicians’ workflows, reducing both the need for manual data entry and the room for human error.

This streamlined solution is a gamechanger for clinical care and efficiency: It’s intelligent enough to instantly improve productivity, but also pragmatic enough to be easily accessible and implemented without requiring extensive IT infrastructure overhauls.

A future-forward foundation

Although fax may not initially come to mind in conversations about innovation and interoperability, this ever-evolving digital toolset holds the power to shape the future of healthcare data exchange. This solution makes it possible to bring HL7/FHIR data into the fold, consistent with HIPAA standards and data protection regulations.

By embracing the potential of digital fax to uplevel information exchange, healthcare organizations can unleash valuable insights and streamline cumbersome workflows — ensuring all stakeholders have the timely information they need to improve health outcomes.

eFax^®: Leading the digital fax revolution

Over the past 25 years, we have evolved our digital fax offering from an online fax service to a robust, fully cloud-based solution that redefines the way organizations and businesses of all sizes securely communicate and manage document workflows.

eFax has transformed into a comprehensive digital communication platform, encompassing multiple access points (apps, APIs, web interface) for fax and healthcare-specific protocols (FHIR, HL7, Direct Secure Messaging), while also incorporating artificial intelligence, natural language processing, and large language model technology for data extraction and conversion, advanced electronic signature capabilities, and other cutting-edge features.

Learn more about the evolution of eFax in this eBook: The Evolution of eFax and Leadership in Digital Cloud Fax Technology.

Johnny Hecker

EVP, Operations and Chief Revenue Officer

Navigating the Complexities of Scaling During M&As

As valued eFax Corporate® customers, you understand that mergers and acquisitions (M&As) can significantly impact your organization’s communication and data management systems. The integration of diverse systems and processes introduces complexities that can hinder operational efficiency and create friction. As companies navigate the complexities of combining different technologies and infrastructures, they face the challenge of consolidating systems to reduce redundancy and streamline operations.

Effective communication and data management are critical during M&As, as they influence how quickly and smoothly the integration can proceed. The goal is to minimize disruptions and ensure that all departments and teams can function cohesively despite the organizational changes. One solution that can simplify these transitions is eFax Corporate, a cloud-native fax platform designed to address the specific challenges of scaling services during M&As. By leveraging eFax Corporate, businesses can overcome many of the common pitfalls associated with integrating disparate systems.

Minimizing Costs and Complexity During M&A Activities

Cost Reduction Through Consolidation

One of the primary financial benefits of integrating eFax Corporate during an M&A is the potential for cost reduction. M&As often result in overlapping technologies and redundant systems, which can lead to increased operational and maintenance costs. Traditional fax systems, for instance, involve physical hardware, dedicated phone lines, and ongoing maintenance expenses.

You have eliminated these expenses by transitioning to eFax Corporate’s cloud-based solution, which removes the need for physical fax machines and the associated costs of maintaining them. Instead, you can leverage a single, unified platform that scales with your needs. This consolidation not only reduces infrastructure costs but also minimizes expenses related to hardware upkeep and operational inefficiencies.

Our pay-as-you-go model further enhances financial management by aligning faxing expenses with actual usage, helping you avoid unnecessary costs and allocate resources more effectively.

Simplifying IT Resource Management

Managing multiple fax systems across different departments or acquired companies can place a significant burden on IT resources. Each system requires separate administration, troubleshooting, and support, which can strain IT teams and detract from their ability to focus on strategic initiatives.

With eFax Corporate, you can centralize fax management into a single, cloud-based platform, simplifying the administration process. This centralization reduces the number of support tickets and streamlines IT resource allocation. IT teams can manage all fax-related tasks from a unified interface, improving efficiency and reducing the time spent on maintenance and troubleshooting.

The ease of integration with existing IT infrastructure further enhances the benefits of eFax Corporate. The platform’s compatibility with various business applications means that your IT team can implement eFax Corporate without extensive reconfiguration or additional training, allowing for a smoother transition during the M&A process.

Optimizing Operational Efficiency with eFax Corporate

Seamless Integration and Flexibility

Operational efficiency is crucial during M&As, as you need to maintain continuity while integrating new systems and processes. eFax Corporate’s integration with existing workflows and business applications plays a vital role in optimizing operational efficiency.

Our platform’s flexibility allows for integration with a wide range of enterprise applications, including Customer Relationship Management (CRM) systems, Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems, and Document Management Systems (DMS). This capability ensures that fax communications are embedded within existing workflows, enhancing productivity and reducing the risk of communication disruptions.

Our platform’s flexibility also allows you to customize your fax solutions according to specific business needs. Whether it’s automating document routing or implementing custom workflows, eFax Corporate can be tailored to fit the unique requirements of each business unit or department, ensuring that fax operations align with overall business goals.

Enhancing Performance and Security

Performance and security are paramount when managing sensitive data, especially during M&As. eFax Corporate provides a consistent and reliable platform that ensures all data transmissions are secure and compliant with regulatory standards. Our advanced encryption protocols protect data both in transit and at rest, significantly reducing the risk of unauthorized access.

Perhaps, more importantly, eFax Corporate adheres to industry standards and regulations, such as HIPAA and GDPR, ensuring that your fax communications meet compliance requirements.

By leveraging a secure and compliant fax solution, your business can enhance overall performance and mitigate the risks associated with handling sensitive information. This focus on security not only protects your organization’s data but also helps build trust with clients and stakeholders during the M&A process.

Positioning Fax Operations for Continued Success

Ensuring Scalability for Future Growth

A key advantage of adopting a cloud-native platform like eFax Corporate is its scalability. As your business continues to grow and evolve, its fax operations need to adapt to changing requirements. eFax Corporate’s cloud-based infrastructure provides the flexibility to scale operations without the need for significant hardware investments or system overhauls.

The platform can easily accommodate increased fax volumes, additional users, and new business processes, ensuring that your fax solution remains effective as your organization expands. This scalability is particularly beneficial during M&As, where rapid changes in business needs and operational requirements are common.

Long-Term Benefits of a Cloud-Based Solution

Cloud technology supports digital transformation by enabling your business to streamline operations, reduce costs, and enhance flexibility. eFax Corporate’s cloud-based solution is integral to this transformation, offering long-term benefits that extend beyond the immediate M&A process.

The cloud-based nature of eFax Corporate allows for regular updates and improvements without requiring manual intervention. This ensures that your fax solution remains current with the latest technology advancements and compliance standards. Additionally, cloud solutions typically offer improved disaster recovery options and data redundancy, further enhancing business continuity.

By adopting eFax Corporate, your organization can maintain a competitive advantage in an increasingly digital world. The platform’s ability to support ongoing digital initiatives and adapt to future changes ensures that your fax operations are aligned with broader business objectives and technological advancements.

Positioning Your Business for Success During M&A

Integrating eFax Corporate during mergers and acquisitions offers numerous benefits, including cost reduction, simplified IT management, and enhanced operational efficiency. The cloud-native platform addresses the specific challenges of scaling services during M&As, providing a solution that is both flexible and secure. By consolidating fax services with eFax Corporate, your organization can navigate the complexities of M&As more effectively, ensuring a smoother transition and positioning itself for long-term success in a rapidly evolving digital landscape.

Kamran Shafii

Content Manager

An FCC ruling allows telecom companies to cease support for analog communications, which means you won’t be able to rely on your fax machines or on-prem fax servers for much longer.

As a corporate IT professional, you probably have many valid reasons for wanting to finally dump your legacy fax infrastructure—from the hassles of troubleshooting paper jams to the high costs of renewing maintenance agreements.

But based on a federal regulation just updated in August 2022, if your company needs reliable and affordable faxing capability going forward, you’ll actually need to retire that legacy fax infrastructure—quickly—and replace it with something new.

What This Federal Ruling Means for You

For decades, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) required telecommunications companies to offer their customers affordable analog communications using the Plain Old Telephone Service (POTS). However, with the ever-increasing availability and falling costs of digital services such as VoIP, millions of customers have migrated away from the POTS network on their own, making these services both more burdensome and less profitable for carriers.

In 2019, the FCC issued a ruling allowing these companies to retire their POTS infrastructure over a three-year transition period, which ended in August 2022. However, it’s important to note that “the Commission has not mandated the decommissioning of POTS lines. In FCC 19-72, adopted in August 2019, the Commission granted forbearance from two narrow regulatory obligations imposed on incumbent local exchange carriers (LECs). Specifically, the Commission granted forbearance relief to price cap LECs throughout their local service areas from the obligations to (1) make analog copper loops available to competitive LECs on an unbundled basis at TELRIC rates, and (2) offer for resale at wholesale rates any telecommunications service that the carrier provides at retail to subscribers who are not telecommunications carriers.”

This ruling does not mean that all POTS lines must be replaced with alternative services immediately, but it does signal a strong push towards digital communication methods. During the three-year transition period, competitive LECs were required to make alternative arrangements in the affected service areas. Now that the transition period has ended, it’s likely that your phone carrier is working to decommission these lines.

Why You Should Be Looking for a New Fax Solution Right Now

A word of warning. Perhaps you’re one of the lucky organizations whose phone carrier is behind on the FCC’s August 2022 transition deadline. Maybe your carrier hasn’t even begun the work of drawing down the POTS infrastructure that supports your analog fax lines. You should not treat your carrier’s delay as an opportunity to relax your own search for a more modern business-faxing alternative.

There are two important reasons for this. First, as your carrier migrates its resources away from supporting your POTS-enabled analog service, you should expect both the quality and reliability of service to deteriorate. Second, the longer it takes your carrier to fully eliminate its POTS infrastructure, the more likely it is that your costs for maintaining that outdated service will rise. After all, another key provision of the FCC’s ruling was to remove the price caps on what carriers are allowed to charge for POTS-enabled services.

The Smart, Easy Way to Migrate Your Fax Environment Away from POTS

So, while the FCC has not mandated the full shutdown of POTS communications, the regulatory environment has made it clear that reliance on these outdated systems is no longer viable. Even if your provider hasn’t yet decommissioned the POTS infrastructure supporting your faxing capabilities, they will likely do so soon—and from their perspective, the sooner, the better.

What do you do now? There is one extremely simple and cost-effective solution: switch to digital cloud fax. Moving your company to the right, enterprise-caliber cloud faxing solution will mean:

• Your IT team won’t have any onsite hardware to administer or troubleshoot.
• Your staff will be able to send, receive, view, edit, and sign faxes digitally from any computer, tablet, or smartphone.
• Your company will have an affordable, pay-as-you-go fax solution that you can scale up—or down—as much and as often as you need.
• You’ll save time and money by eliminating the time-consuming manual steps of legacy faxing—and replacing them with a streamlined digital platform that integrates seamlessly with your other workflow apps. 

And, perhaps most important for our current conversation: 

• You’ll move your faxing environment from dependence on the near-obsolete POTS to a future-proof cloud-based communications platform currently serving literally millions of businesses’ daily faxing needs.

Kamran Shafii

Content Manager

If your company is a covered entity or business associate in the healthcare industry, you know the ever-growing threat that cybercriminals pose to your patients’ data—and to your company’s HIPAA compliance.

To cite just one example, according to a study reported in HealthCare IT Security, 93% of healthcare organizations suffered a data breach in the last three years. Worse, the same study found that 96% of healthcare security professionals believe their organizations are not technologically equipped to keep pace with hackers’ increasing numbers and sophistication.

Cybercrime Is Evolving, and Your Cybersecurity Needs to Evolve With it

Question: If cybercriminals are becoming more numerous and their methods more advanced, can you afford to allow any aspect of your company’s cybersecurity to remain static?

We believe the answer is clearly no. This is why when selecting any digital service your employees will be using to handle patients’ data—including a cloud fax solution—you should search only for vendors that are working continuously to stay ahead of these risks.

HITRUST CSF^® Certification Demonstrates Your Vendor Is Always Working to Prevent the Next Threat

For healthcare entities like yours, one way to find the technology services that are best equipped to deal with cyber threats is to look for those built by companies that have earned HITRUST Common Security Framework (CSF) certification.

As we’ve noted previously here on the eFax Corporate^® blog, HITRUST CSF certification is considered the gold-standard framework for compliance and security in healthcare IT.

This is partly because the framework incorporates key elements of internationally accepted data standards, such as those from the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), the agency whose security guidelines the US Department of Defense follows for protecting its own data. HITRUST CSF also incorporates the major elements of the most stringent data standards such as PCI, ISO, HITECH and, most relevant here, HIPAA.

But there is another reason HITRUST CSF certification has gained such credibility among healthcare entities and payers. (According to Healthcare Weekly, more than 90 healthcare insurers now require their partners to become HITRUST certified.)

These payers understand that electronic protected health information (ePHI) is among the most attractive types of data to cybercriminals. They know that hackers grow in number each year and that they keep finding creative new ways to attack the networks of covered entities and business associates. And they know that most technology vendors aren’t able to keep up with these security threats.

An important benefit of the HITRUST framework is that is flexible and always evolving to meet new challenges. To attain this certification, an organization must show that its technology and practices are able to quickly adapt to new threats and overcome them.

With that in mind, among all of the other reasons to look only for solutions backed by HITRUST-certified companies, the most important might be this:

HITRUST CSF certification demonstrates the vendor is continually evolving and updating its technology to deal with changes in both healthcare regulations and cybercriminals’ behavior.

The First Major Cloud Fax Provider to Earn HITRUST CSF Certification

Considering how many faxes your organization likely sends and receives—and how many of those contain ePHI—you can see why HIPAA compliance and security should be among your top priorities when selecting the right cloud faxing solution.

That should make the decision easy, because eFax Corporate is the first major cloud fax provider to earn HITRUST CSF certification.

Our enterprise-caliber Digital Cloud Fax Technology (DCFT) solutions have been protecting healthcare organizations’ highly sensitive and regulated data for more than 20 years. Attaining this new HITRUST certification is only our most recent demonstration of eFax Corporate’s commitment to provide the most secure, HIPAA-compliant cloud fax platform for covered entities like yours.

Kamran Shafii

Content Manager

In a recent HITRUST virtual panel co-sponsored by eFax Corporate®, “Effectively Managing Cybersecurity Vulnerabilities in a Turbulent Healthcare Ecosystem,” HITRUST’s Michael Parisi shared an insightful anecdote.

A friend of Michael’s, working from home during the lockdown, had a phone call with a customer to discuss highly sensitive information—while his patio door was wide open. Afterward, the man’s wife came in from outside and told him she heard everything he’d said to the customer. Oh, and so did the couple’s next-door neighbor.

What makes Michael’s point relevant to this conversation about healthcare cybersecurity during COVID is that we’re all running our businesses and performing our jobs under new circumstances, which means we’re all facing new risks and threats.

Now, imagine that call was between a physician and a patient—and think of the neighbor as an Alexa or Siri in the doctor’s home, with a cybercriminal hacking the device to listen in for sensitive data. As Michael pointed out, “The devices are always listening.”

A panel with diverse healthcare-industry expertise

That was just one of many lockdown-era cybersecurity threats discussed by the expert panel, which included:

• The legal perspective:
  Matthew Fisher, who heads the healthcare regulatory team for the New England law firm Mirick O’Connell
• The third-party certification perspective:
  Michael Parisi, VP of Assurance Strategy and Community Development for HITRUST
• The accreditation perspective:
  Lee Barrett, CEO of the Electronic Healthcare Network Accreditation Commission (EHNAC)
• The healthcare cloud-service provider perspective:
  Jeffrey Sullivan, CTO of eFax Corporate’s parent company j2 Cloud Services

COVID challenges for healthcare security professionals

Among the other quarantine-era risks the panel discussed included:

Too much change, too quickly.

Healthcare organizations have had to adjust so much of their operations to address work-from-home arrangements—policies, controls, assessments, tools, technologies—that many IT teams have had to shift their focus away from security, privacy, and regulatory compliance.

Newly generated data is attracting hackers.

With the medical industry working to develop both a COVID vaccine and new treatments, hackers see increased value in going after these companies’ networks and systems to steal this intellectual property. This is why cyberattacks against biopharma companies have skyrocketed since the early days of the pandemic.

Stressful times lead to poor cybersecurity judgment.

Many healthcare-industry professionals are working from home, often for the first time, while also dealing with the stress of the pandemic. These disruptions in our professional and personal lives can leave us more distracted and vulnerable to poor decisions—such as falling for phishing attacks.

EHNAC’s Lee Barrett cited one incredible example. The HHS issued a warning that hospitals’ security and privacy officers were receiving postcards, supposedly from the “Secretary of HIPAA Compliance,” asking them to visit a URL for a risk assessment. The problem: There is so such position as Secretary of HIPAA Compliance. This is a new phishing attack, designed to take advantage of everyone’s confusion during COVID. And many of these healthcare security professionals are falling for it.

Understandably, healthcare orgs’ priority is always on saving lives and is even more important now

Another challenge the panel discussed was that the healthcare industry has only finite resources and budget—and right now, the priority for these organizations is protecting people’s health during COVID. In other words, many organizations are having to weigh competing objectives and de-emphasize everything other than the challenges of treating COVID patients and saving lives. Unfortunately, “everything” can also include cybersecurity and data-privacy initiatives.

What healthcare IT teams should do now

The panelists offered a number of suggestions for health organizations to better protect their sensitive data. j2’s Jeffrey Sullivan, for example, suggested a couple of best practices for healthcare IT teams during what he described as our current “once-in-a-lifetime level of distraction.”

1. Make sure your automated solutions are in place

First, Jeffrey suggested, review your cybersecurity infrastructure across your newly distributed organization. Make sure all of the automated tools and processes are doing their jobs, meaning:

• All of employees’ company-issued devices are encrypted
• Your team has remote monitoring in place for these devices
• You’ve implemented fraud protection, malware detection, and intrusion detection

2. Make sure your cloud service providers are prepared as well

Jeffrey also recommended contacting the third parties whose apps, platforms, and other cloud tools your employees use. Ask them what specific steps they’ve taken to protect their systems—and your company’s sensitive data—during this period of heightened risk from cybercriminals.

Lee Barrett of EHNAC—who called j2’s level of cybersecurity preparedness “a model for the industry”—offered another valuable recommendation:

3. Get a third-party risk assessment

Lee noted that the best way to make sure your organization is meeting all of its cybersecurity and regulatory standards is to have your infrastructure and processes audited and tested by a third-party expert.

Now more than ever, your internal IT security teams have too much on their plate to make sure you’re addressing—or even seeing—all of the new potential threats to your organization’s data security.

For HIPAA-compliant, HITRUST-certified, and COVID-secure cloud faxing, learn what eFax Corporate can do for your organization.

Kamran Shafii

Content Manager