How else am I supposed to transmit all this PHI I'm digging up out of the file shed? I hear that new-fangled inter-network world-wide-web is insecure and full of hackers!
We consult with a medium sized medical group that interfaces with all of the larger hospital groups and tons of smaller clinics around the area. They had me do an audit on their fax server because they were getting complaints that a lot of faxes weren't getting to their destination. Well.
Almost 90% of outbound faxes didn't get delivered. What?
So I started researching the destination numbers of those faxes. About 2/3 of those numbers continuously rang, were continuously busy, had been disconnected at some point, or were voice answered by someone who had no idea that they were supposed to be making fax noises at me.
Sadly, the story ends there. I didn't have the stomach to investigate how these records were getting places if most of the faxes were destined to fax machines that no longer existed.
I've spent far too much of my life around faxes.