GFI FAXmaker and HIPAA Compliance

Introduction:

The U.S. Congress recognized the need for national patient record privacy standards in 1996 and the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA) was enacted. The law included provisions designed to improve efficiency and reduce costs for health care businesses by encouraging electronic transactions, but it also required new safeguards to protect the security and confidentiality of that information. In November 1999, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) published proposed regulations to guarantee patients new rights and protections against the misuse or disclosure of their health records.

The Act has changed the way healthcare organizations send, receive, and manage confidential information. Previous hard copy paper systems are considered insecure and a liability and therefore new alternatives for exchanging and tracking protected health information (PHI) are required.

This document outlines the requirements of HIPAA in terms of faxing PHI and how GFI Software’s GFI FAXmaker, an easy-to-use fax server, can help health organizations to comply with HIPAA’s regulations for information flow and exchange.

Fax Server technology is a secure method of communicating and is simple and affordable way to assist healthcare organizations in becoming HIPAA compliant.

HIPAA and faxing

The primary objective of HIPAA is that health organizations have the infrastructure and procedures – administrative, technical and physical – that allow them to safeguard patient health information from any kind of exposure or disclosure to unauthorized parties when this information is required to be transmitted or delivered to authorized individuals.

HIPAA does not prohibit the use of fax machines to communicate PHI; however the information is subject to strict regulations that protect the privacy and security of the information both at the point of dispatch, during transit and at the point of delivery.

The security provisions of HIPAA require “reasonable” efforts to make sure that the information delivery via fax has been sent securely and was received securely and by the person intended.

HIPAA makes a number of demands to ensure that patient health information is properly protected. These, in relation to security and privacy, include:

All fax machines are to be placed in a secure area and not generally accessible.
Only authorized personnel are to have access and security measures should be provided to ensure that this occurs.
Destination numbers are verified before transmission
Recipients are notified that they have been sent a fax.
Include a cover-sheet clearly stating that the fax contains confidential health information, is being sent with the patient’s authorization, should not be passed on to other parties without express consent; and should be destroyed if not received by the intended recipient.
Any patient data should be in the fax body and not in any of the data fields.
Faxes are to be sent to secure destinations; i.e. the fax machine of the recipient must be in a secure location, accessible only by those authorized to receive the information.
Maintain a copy of the confirmation sheet of the fax transmission, including the necessary data such as time and recipient’s number.
Confirm fax delivery by phoning the recipient.
Received faxes are to be stored in a secure location.
Maintain transmission and transaction log summaries.

Why traditional faxing methods are problematic

Although HIPAA does not prohibit patient health information from being faxed to authorized recipients, manual faxing is fraught with security issues that would certainly prevent health organizations from being compliant with HIPAA strict requirements.

With manual faxing, there are a number of risks:

Fax machines may not be located in a secure area and access to faxes may not be restricted to authorized personnel only
Senders are required to wait by the machine until the transmission is completed, waiting for the transmission report, collect it and file. They also have to call the recipient to ensure that it has been received completely and as intended. This takes up precious time for the health professional. If the recipient is not available, important information may be delayed
Incoming faxes need to be removed immediately from the output tray and distributed to the recipient to reduce the chance of an inappropriate use or disclosure
Any pre-programmed fax numbers need to be validated periodically and regular fax recipients contacted regularly to ensure that the number has not changed
The destination fax machine may be in a secure location but still accessible to a number of people
The information in hard copy has to filed securely
Transmission may not always be secure and reliable (especially in areas with basic telecommunication infrastructure)
In the spirit of HIPAA, which aims to create more effective health organization practices, manual faxing is expensive – requiring multiple communications lines, hardware, maintenance costs and material (paper and toner)

Why GFI Software’s fax server GFI FAXmaker is the solution

GFI Software’s fax server software, GFI FAXmaker resolves all the fax-related privacy and security issues that are highlighted in a health organization’s HIPAA plan.

GFI FAXmaker makes sending and receiving faxes an efficient, simple and cost effective process. The problems with manual faxing: printing out the document, walking to the fax machine, waiting for the fax to go through, not to mention the cost of fax machine supplies and repair, are immediately resolved but more importantly GFI FAXmaker allows users to send and receive faxes directly from their email client – in most cases totally eliminating the need for a manual fax machine.

GFI FAXmaker is easy to install, requires little maintenance and integrates with existing messaging clients and customized solutions.

GFI FAXmaker integrates with your mail server, allowing users to send and receive faxes and SMS/text messages using their email client. You can even backup all faxes and search them in the same way that emails are stored and retrieved on the network. Furthermore, if email correspondence is being archived (which is a federal requirement for most sectors), all your faxes are also stored in a central, secure database.

With GFI FAXmaker you do away with the need to handle and transfer original or duplicate copies of patients’ medical records, thereby reducing the risk of losing or misplacing files as well as reducing the time to send the documentation.

Since faxes are sent and received via email and authentication on the email client is required to access the faxes, there is no concern that the patient health information will be sent to the wrong recipient or that someone else can retrieve the information without authorization.

To ensure that only the person that was fax was intended for actually sees the fax, GFI FAXmaker can automatically route incoming faxes to the user's mailbox or to a particular printer based on a DID/DDI/DTMF number or on the line on which the fax was received. Faxes can also be forwarded to a public folder or assigned to a network printer per installed fax port. This means that the fax goes through no other hands.

With server systems and database stored in secure locations and managed solely by authorized personnel only, there is not risk that emails/ faxes can be tampered with, deleted or accessed by third parties. This ensures that all patient information is secure at all times – prior to, during and after transmission.