Thought Leadership
CIOs Agree: It’s Time to Overcome Healthcare’s Reliance on Paper Data Exchange
Thought LeadershipIt’s 2025, yet 46% of healthcare facilities still rely on paper fax machines, rather than digital fax solutions, to send information to other providers in the absence of an EHR or other advanced technologies, a recent survey of healthcare CIOs found.
It’s one of the main reasons data exchange between facilities can take one to five days, on average—and it has detrimental consequences for patient care.
Healthcare providers consistently face breakdowns in communication and care coordination with small and under-resourced facilities due to gaps in information sharing technologies, according to a survey commissioned by Consensus Cloud Solutions and conducted by the College of Healthcare Information Management Executives (CHIME) this past fall. These gaps include lack of access to an EHR or the latest interoperability technology.
When this happens, our survey found that care coordination and care quality suffers. Four top challenges cited by healthcare CIOs include (in rank order):
- Breakdowns in care coordination
- Difficulties making referrals or following up with referrals
- Challenges in finding patient information
- Difficulty determining who to send information to and how
Breakdowns in information sharing also put health equity at risk, according to survey respondents. More than half of IT leaders (54%) say challenges around exchanging patient data with small or post-acute facilities have had some impact on health equity. Nearly 42% say the impact has been significant.
Providers recognize the problem, but they struggle to find a solution. Just 30% of larger providers are working one-on-one with smaller providers to address this challenge, the survey found. Nearly 60% say it’s a problem they’re not equipped to solve.
Leaders believe AI could hold the answer to improved information sharing. Nearly 46% believe in the potential of artificial intelligence (AI) to ease communication with small and post-acute providers, and about 1 out of 3 are exploring the use of AI to address this challenge. One largely unexplored opportunity: the use of translation technology that can turn unstructured information like a faxed document into structured data to make information exchange faster and more secure. While this approach is currently used by just 13% of respondents, it’s a practical tool that is driving return on investment for first-movers in this space.
Find out more in Consensus’ latest ebook, “Overcoming Healthcare’s Digital Divide with Digital Fax: It’s Time to Ensure Small Facilities Aren’t Left Behind.”
Download a copy to find a better path forward information exchange—and why it’s time to ditch paper fax for digital.
