Take Faxing Back to the Future: New Tool Enables Rehab Therapists to More Efficiently, Securely Share Information

In Back to the Future Part II, which hit theaters in 1989, writers predicted a future (2015) in which sneakers are self-tying, flying cars are powered by trash via fusion, and fax machines dominate the way we communicate.

Silly, right?

Not so much for healthcare workers who, after more than three decades of evolving information technology, are still forced to rely on fax machines to make up for shortcomings in digital record sharing.

The Problem with Faxing in Healthcare

Yes, in an industry that has been eager to embrace advantages gleaned from advances like artificial intelligence, machine learning and robotics, 75% of patient information is still exchanged via fax.¹

The reason? Faxing enables medical offices to overcome something that continues to be a huge problem in the healthcare world: the lack of interoperability between various EMRs and EHRs.

Plus, faxing is secure – at least when compared with your standard email.

Unfortunately, though, faxing is also inefficient, inconvenient, frustrating and costly, driving up expenses for rehab therapy clinics that spend hours each day sending, receiving, transcribing and filing paper faxes.

While we have much more progress to make as an industry when it comes to eliminating the need for faxing, digitizing the process of sharing patient information can go a long way toward saving clinics significant time and money.

Such is the basis for the recent release of our E-Faxing and Direct Secure Messaging functionality in the Net Health Therapy for Clinics EMR solution for private practice rehab therapists.

Net Health Therapy for Clinics + E-Faxing & Direct Secure Messaging

Thanks to a continued partnership with Kno2, a company leading the future of healthcare communication, rehab therapy clients using the Net Health Therapy for Clinics EMR can now more seamlessly exchange patient information using integrated e-faxing and direct secure messaging solutions.

Read our Press Release announcing Net Health’s partnerships with Kno2.

The e-faxing capabilities embedded within the EMR enable physical, occupational and speech therapy providers to digitally send faxes (without the need for a physical fax machine) containing personal health information based on secure, HIPAA-compliant standards.

The tool also enables rehab therapy clinic staff to send messages and data using Direct Secure Messaging protocol, an email-like system that utilizes digital certificates and a Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) to encrypt the contents of a message.

Our goal is to enable rehab therapists to vastly reduce the time and resources they spend on faxing, enhancing productivity while enabling teams to strengthen referral networks, improve care coordination, and meet the demands of new care models.

This includes models driven by value-based care, which requires rehab clinics to share data and provide more seamless access to patient information.

One client, a private practice physical therapist who operates a single clinic in rural California, says the use of Kno2 through our Net Health Therapy for Clinics integration has reduced administrative costs by 25% while reducing monthly paper costs by 75%.

To learn more about Net Health Therapy for Clinics + E-Faxing & Direct Secure Messaging, and to schedule a demo of these and other EMR-based solutions for private practice rehab therapy, contact us today!

REFERENCES:
¹ Vox, “The Fax of Life,” Jan. 12, 2018