Upper Chesapeake Health – FAXBOX Replacement

FAXBOX is Dead, HIPAA-compliant Faxing Isn’t

MEDITECH sites and other owners of this now-defunct product are adopting a new, more portable fax platform

Faxing directly from a MEDITECH environment hasn’t been impossible, although for many what has passed as state-of-the-art fax technology seemed impossibly expensive and error prone. That is especially true for users of the FAXBOX family of fax servers, now in the rapidly dimming twilight of its lifecycle.

Many healthcare organizations have been looking for a more cost-effective faxing solution that could overcome FAXBOX’s drawbacks, not the least of them being the difficulty of finding service and support. FAXBOX’s manufacturer, DCE Corporation, went belly-up in August of 2002, leaving its customers without a resource for troubleshooting device problems much less evolving a more price/performant fax platform.

From the beginning, the healthcare community had to basically content itself with the original FAXBOX’s single port design and approximately $10,000 price tag — need another port, add another ten grand to your budget. The limitations and cost were only somewhat ameliorated by the arrival of FAXBOX 2′s more advanced features

But now organizations with large fax loads and small telecommunications, budgets can find a next-generation faxing solution that overcomes those and other FAXBOX shortcomings with NetFax EM4 from Interbit Data Inc..

The Natick, Massachusetts-based company is a developer of telecommunications solutions for HIPAA-compliant information access and distribution. It has recently expanded its software-based NetFax product into a multi-port, industrial-strength faxing platform called the NetFax EM4.

The appliance version of the NetFax solution, NetFax EM4 is a solid state, plug-and-play fax solution that seamlessly integrates into existing MAGIC systems. With four integrated modem ports and no-maintenance design, it offers the expanded capacity that directs faxes to multiple users defined within MEDITECH.

“We send probably hundreds of faxes a day from our lab and radiology department and we’re able to send them five times faster than we could with our old FAXBOX and FAXBOX 2,” says Dennis Bosley, Manager of Networking and Telecommunications at Upper Chesapeake Health Inc. in Havre de Grace, Maryland. “It seemed that every other day the FAXBOX would give us connectivity problems that would require restarting the process and spooling the jobs all over again. But NetFax EM4 works extremely well by comparison. Installation is simple, there’s no learning curve to speak of, and it was half the price of FAXBOX.”

Monitoring of outgoing faxes is also done automatically, which is helping Upper Chesapeake and other users comply with current HIPAA requirements. NetFax EM4′s logs are maintained on the server and communicated directly to the MEDITECH audit trail so that faxes can be tracked to help ensure timely delivery and patient confidentiality.

“Our biggest reason for implementing the EM4 is that faxes are distributed automatically from within MEDITECH — otherwise we’d have to send our faxes manually which diverts staff from more important duties,” adds George Tomas, Director of Information Services at Griffin Hospital in Derby, Connecticut. ” That saves us time and money since we have to send a up to 250 faxes a day from our radiology and medical records departments as well as our lab because most doctors do not have remote printing capability at their offices.”

There were also two printer formats that had to be accommodated, requiring separate FAXBOXes for laser and dot matrix printer output, Tomas points out. Those sorts of considerations and added expense have become non-issues with NetFax EM4. So, too, is the elimination of the cumbersome testing procedure that FAXBOX required.

“Since the FAXBOX did not have a console interface port, it was harder to test FAXBOX,” Tomas explains. “NetFax EM4 is as simple to configure as a printer.”

With low maintenance and support costs, an entry level price less than half that of a FAXBOX, and up to four available ports to handle the heaviest fax volumes, the NetFax EM4 delivers big performance in a device no bigger than a hardcover book. Says Upper Chesapeake’s Dennis Bosley, “There were always problems with the FAXBOX and we’d hear about it from our staff. But now that we have NetFax EM4, you don’t have the same cries of frustration from them anymore. And sometimes what you don’t hear is telling you exactly what you need to know.”