Why use fax? Faxing is still a convenient way to send and receive confidential documents, especially in the business world. The advent of email has changed the way business partners and customers alike undertake correspondence, but the fax machine remains a big part of how contracts get signed and transmitted and how messages are delivered.
You may be asking yourself: Why does faxing still exist in the business world? What are the benefits of this HIPAA compliant internet fax technology? There are several key reasons that faxing – and its new incarnation, fax to email – is still one of the best ways to send documents today. Here are just a few of them:
Resilient form of communication
The usefulness of faxing is still understood around the world. According to B2B News Network, 17 billion faxes are sent each year. There are multiple reasons companies continue to hold onto faxing tech, and one of them is that it is a reliable way to send and receive documents. Some businesses use fax machines out of the need to accommodate their customers who continue to utilize fax technology.
“We use them because our clients use them,” said Chris Nicholls of the company Guaranteed Removals. “Usually we provide clients with the option to either fax their contract or scan it. I’d say it’s still about 30 percent of people who will choose to fax it.”
“Instead of sending copies with a physical machine, fax solutions allow businesses to email certified documents.”
Therefore, for various people and businesses, faxing is still the go-to form of communication. For instance, when a man was bitten by a dog in Darien, Connecticut, the police weren’t notified by phone or over their radios. They were notified of the incident via a fax sent by the man in question, according to the Darien Patch.
While the act of faxing itself still offers strong benefits compared with more recent forms of communication in the minds of many, fax-over-Internet-protocol systems offer even more security and resilience. Instead of sending copies with a physical machine, fax solutions allow businesses to email certified documents – making it easier to transmit forms no matter where senders or recipients may be. This comes in handy, for example, when employees are traveling or working from home.
Helps health care organizations maintain compliance
HIPAA compliant internet fax has been a useful tool for the health care industry since its inception. According to HealthcareITNews contributor Erin McCann, the 2012 National Physicians Survey found that faxing was still being used as the predominant form of communication by 63 percent of health care organizations. Part of this is due to the fact that fax solutions help providers maintain compliance with the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, which dictates that health care organizations should take precautions to keep patient data confidential.
Fax solutions, such as HIPAA compliant internet fax, offer that kind of security. In order to keep confidential patient data safe and out of the hands of those who would use it for harmful activities like identity theft, hospitals and practitioners have to take extra steps when it comes to handling and faxing medical records and achieving HIPAA compliance. Fax-to-email systems allow the storage of electronic medical records on secure private servers, which helps organizations achieve HIPAA compliance. These systems also do away with the need for physical copies, which can be lost or stolen.
FoIP takes away the need for the transmission of physical medical records.Reduce paper use with FoIP
One drawback of traditional faxing equipment is that it utilizes a lot of paper. While many businesses have goals of achieving paperless office environments, the fact of the matter is that companies continue to use paper on an exponential scale. According to the Environmental Protection Agency, the U.S. consumes 69 million tons of paper and paperboard each year – something that is harmful to the environment and bad news for companies’ budgets.
While the completely paperless office may be a pipe dream, FoIP systems can help businesses achieve their paper-light goals. When a fax is sent over the Internet, there is no hardware or paper involved – just a PDF document that can be opened via email. In this way, companies can reduce their printing budgets along with paper use.
Enhance enterprise communication, collaboration and compliance efforts with a proven FoIP solution and HIPPA-compliant internet fax from FaxCore. Contact FaxCore today to learn more about their ‘Partly-Cloudy’ fax solutions and HIPPA-compliant internet fax.
