Download, Sign And Fax The Hipaa Confidentiality: Fill & Download for Free

When patients sign that HIPAA paperwork when they first engage their provider. They are essentially signing a waiver stating that they understand that their provider will never actively negate their expectations of confidentiality and privacy. When that HIPAA is signed, the patient is basically giving the provider permission to exchange their information with other medical professionals either via documents, telehealth calls, and electronic medical records. Honestly? I think that doctors realize the responsibility they are taking on and don’t buy their firewalls or internet security from Staples. This would be a huge investment for the safety of their facility and protection of their client information.Personally, I love the new electronic versions of medical information. I was first practicing when paper was the only method. Paperwork information can be destroyed, lost, stolen even easier than via a computer. Computers are backed up and those backups have backups. So when a file becomes corrupted, it can be replaced. Paperwork is also slow, requires fax machines or mail to get to another care provider or hospital. Some medical records are as large as a family bible, so take that into consideration, lol! Computers can downsize and download megabytes in just seconds. If someone was experiencing a medical emergency and had a large record, can you imagine the faxing time that one might waste and such long wait times may interfere with care in such an event.I really hope that patients would consider the pros of electronic records if they are being especially cautious about it.

If you’re a security-minded person, this is the right way to go about protecting your business communication. Especially because fax can easily be hacked.So here’s the way it works - usually the term “secure” in faxing means HIPAA-compliant. Secure faxing over the internet can be achieved in a couple of ways.Method 1 - Copper (Wired) Faxing - This is the old school way. It’s considered to be secure because the only method to intercept this kind of fax is wiretapping. Unless it’s the FBI, you’re unlikely to get hacked.Method 2 - Internet Faxing - This has to be secured at a couple of different points in order to be HIPAA compliant.Important Note about Email Faxing: If your fax service uses email, it is only secure if the both the fax and email service are HIPAA compliant and have Business Associate Agreements (BAAs) to back up that compliance.Most email services are not able to provide that, and you would need to have a specialized email client. Additionally, all the emails would need to be encrypted using TLS.So because faxing over email is inherently not secure, what can you do to have a secure fax system?Explaining modern day secure fax for businesses:A fax system needs to be secured on the server-side. It needs to use HTTPS and be secured on the server level. Inbound faxes will be stored in your portal, and can be securely downloaded to your local network.Your fax system can email you a notification that you have a new fax, but it can’t attach the faxed document to your email due to the above reasons.Instead, the email provides you with a link to the document in your fax portal.This requires a login to the fax portal which protects the documents from interception and accidental disclosure. Similarly you can’t fax out using email either, you have to use your secure portal.That’s the nuts and bolts of HIPAA compliant fax, and how it all works. Usually, companies want their secure fax to become part of a greater HIPAA compliant UCaaS ecosystem, so that everything is unified and works together as one solution.It’s important that your UCaaS provider can answer the following questions:Is your platform secured by HTTPS?Can I get the faxes attached to an email? (The answer should be NO).Can you provide a signed BAA for HIPAA compliance?Will my fax data / communications be kept 100% confidential?