Billions of dollars later, the U.S. healthcare system is still running on fax. Most other industries have long moved on, but physicians’ offices and hospitals are still rife with printouts, blank pages, and illegible handwriting. That’s if the fax goes to the right number in the first place.
Everyone hates it, but the fax machine is still used for more than 75% of all medical communication.
Why does this continue? What’s the culprit? Data may be accurate, complete, and digital in one physician’s office; the problem is when that physician needs to collaborate. Data has to be shareable, and getting data to flow across divergent platforms is what ScriptSender is all about.
The standard solution has been to build technology bridges, like HL7 or a VPN, between platforms. But that requires ongoing IT overhead—in other words, time and money. Another alternative has emerged: fax replacement. Essentially effecting a pdf printout or image file of an order or referral, this kind of technology doesn’t address the real problem—making the data itself move. Staff still has to read the data and enter it manually into the target system.
ScriptSender has a simpler, faster answer.
ScriptSender enables referrers to transmit any document, from any system, directly to an imaging center in seconds—without any special interface. Referrers activate ScriptSender with a simple point-and-click in a web browser—and then can use the print command from any application to send any document securely. That includes notes, lab reports, a whole patient folder, anything.
Fax is still with us, but it doesn’t have to be. Some ScriptSender customers have replaced 65% of all inbound faxes in the first year using the software solution, and continue to make strides toward what CMS calls a ‘Fax-Free Zone.’
Best of all, the information is transmitted as live data, not a .pdf or image file, directly into the imaging center’s RIS or EHR.
“When we talk to attendees at RSNA, or any other trade show, there is always this aha moment when they realize we aren’t just a pdf printer that allows a referring physician to print a referral to them,” said Chris Craft, CEO of ScriptSender. “We actually capture the real postscript data from that print and insert the data directly into their RIS. It is far more than fax replacement. That is the very smallest part of what we do. It is information sharing, interoperability, integration in seconds—with any EMR, RIS, or PACS.”
Faxing forces highly skilled professionals to spend their time filing papers, and it significantly degrades collaboration and, by extension, patient care. Fax workflows, whether electronic fax or not, still rely on manual data entry. They are inefficient workflows that can now be fully automated with improved reliability. Clinicians are ready for a real solution, and government regulations are pointing toward greater incentives for interoperability.
Fax is still with us, but it doesn’t have to be. Some ScriptSender customers have replaced 65% of all inbound faxes in the first year using the software solution, and continue to make strides toward what CMS calls a “Fax-Free Zone.” ScriptSender is part of modernizing healthcare in the 21st century.