Creating A HIPAA Compliant Fax

If you work in the healthcare field, you are probably still sending and receiving faxes. In order to follow regulations, you need to create a HIPPA complaint fax. Fortunately, there are a number of steps that you can do to ensure that all faxes you send and receive are HIPAA compliant.

Fax Machine Location

To receive a HIPAA compliant fax, you will need to have your fax machine in the right location. You should never receive a protected document on a publicly available fax machine. Your machine should be in a protected location, out of the public line of sight and accessible only approved staff.

If you are sending a fax, you will need to find out if the fax machine you send to is in a secure location. If the receiving machine is not n a secure location, your fax will not be HIPAA compliant. It is recommended that you contact the recipient before you send the fax.

Use A Cloud-Based Service

A lot of businesses are moving away from the manual fax machine and starting to use online fax services. There are many of these services that are HIPAA compliant and you should consider using them. These services will make use of encryption technology to secure your transmissions and you never have to worry about the physical fax machine location.

To verify that the service you want to use is HIPAA compliant, the service should sign a business associate’s agreement with you. This agreement is a legal requirement that they have to provide. If the company is unwilling to do this, it is likely that they are not actually HIPAA complaint.

Always Use A Cover Page

One of the HIPAA requirements is the use of a cover sheet. This cover sheet will need to have an approved HIPAA statement on it. If you are using a manual machine, you will need to have a copy of this sheet available and always use it.

This can be made easier when you are using a cloud-based HIPAA compliant fax service. These services will create the cover page as a standard part of their workflow. This ensures that you are always compliant.

Have An Audit Trail

In order to remain compliant with HIPAA, you will need to have an audit trail of all activity relating to patient documents. If you do not have a clear and detailed audit trail, you could be liable for fines. When you use a manual fax machine, you will need to have a system in place to create the necessary audit trail.

If you are using an online HIPAA complaint fax service, the audit trail will be created automatically. A good service will also allow you to access the trail for every document within their dashboard. It is recommended that you find out more about the audit trail being created before you start using the service.

There are a lot of steps that you need to take to ensure that you are HIPAA complaint when sending and receiving faxes. Using an online fax service which is complaint will reduce the burden on you.