Furthermore, it Addresses Vital Regions (countries)

90% Healthcare Providers Still Rely On Fax Machines, Posing Privacy Risk™

Despite more secure technology, the majority of healthcare is still relying on fax; CMS has urged for an end to the outdated tech by 2020, due to privacy risks and interoperability issues.

By Jessica Davis

November 14, 2019 - The healthcare sector has rapidly increased the deployment of advanced technologies for more than a decade, such as machine learning. But despite the availability of more secure messaging platforms and other technologies, 90 percent of healthcare still relies on fax machines, according to a new TigerConnect report.

Another 39 percent are still using pagers, while a significant number are also heavily relying on landlines to communicate.

“The shocking lack of communication innovation comes at a steep price,” TigerConnect CEO Brad Brooks wrote. “The downstream impact is a health system that commonly experiences chronic delays, increased operational costs that are often passed down to the public, physician and nurse burnout, medical errors that could otherwise have been prevented, or at worst case, lead to patient death.”

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“While the industry faces serious challenges when it comes to communication - both among care teams and between patients and providers - the good news is that technology exists to address the problems in a meaningful way that can rapidly lead to improved patient experiences and optimal healthcare outcomes,” he added.

In addition to patient safety risk, fax machines pose a risk to patient privacy. There’s a long list of breaches caused by patient records being sent to the wrong fax number. Other researchers have found risks to patient data itself, including vulnerabilities in the devices and data left on machines at the end of the product lifecycle.

The Centers of Medicare and Medicaid Services has also called to an end to fax machine use in the healthcare sector by 2020. The UK National Health Service has also called for a fax machine ban, as well.

Despite these risks, TigerConnect found providers are not only still overwhelmingly using legacy technology, 55 percent of the 200 report respondents said their organization is behind or very behind in adopting modern communication technology compared to other sectors.

Traditional calls are the most common form of communication in healthcare, followed by email. But fax communications are the third-most used method, followed by pagers.

As a result, 39 percent said they felt communication between care team members was very difficult or difficult. Another 52 percent said they have experienced communication disconnects that impact patients daily, or several times each week.

Further, there is a 50 percent greater likelihood of daily communication disconnects when secure messaging is not used across the enterprise. Meaning, it’s difficult to reach the right person at the right time, causing bottlenecks.

Patients are also noticing the communication gap: 74 percent of patients who spent time in a hospital in the last two years indicated they were frustrated by inefficient communication processes.

However, the report did highlight some fax online promising statistics. Nearly half of organizations use EHR communication as much as whiteboards. And secure messaging is the top communication method for both nurses (45 percent) and providers (39 percent).