Are faxes safer than scanned emails?

Faxes go point-to-point over a phone line. No interception unless the phone line is tapped.

Emails go through servers, and the .pdf documents can be altered. Networks can be hacked.

But really neither is more secure, especially when places like my office use VOIP connections for all the phone lines.

And more and more, people don’t have fax machines readily available to send the fax anyway.

Would it be harder to tap a phone line than to hack a server?

Emails are over the net, so I guess it’s less secure. Honestly, I think it’s BS that one is so much more secure than another. In my opinion, most people who want fax only don’t want you (me, patients, clients) to have their email address.

It’s the difference in technology that raises concerns for them. It may be a valid concern so I wouldn’t jump to call it BS. It happens in government agencies, like that IRS, and I ran in to it again today trying to get my medical records sent to me. They’re trying to protect me and my information, not themselves. Well, they could be protecting themselves from a lawsuit by me if they haven’t done everything they can to be sure my information is secure.

^^Government I’ll agree. Doctors I call BS.

This was a hospital, not just a doctor. It was regarding a visit to the ER in June that got me admitted for a week. I wanted my records for that. Do you understand now?

Same difference to me, hospital or doctor, they both have to follow the same HIPAA laws.

If you’re ok with it then that’s good. It won’t bother you like it bothers me. I’m not trying to convince you you should be bothered. It’s just my opinion that if the patient is ok with email then it should be ok.

Why don’t call BS on the government for requiring a fax then? What’s the difference?

@Dutchess_III I’m not sure what government situation we are talking about. If it’s sensitive material that justifiably should not risk someone seeing the document who shouldn’t, then email might be too big of a risk. Fax carries risk too.

HIPAA is to protect the patient’s privacy. If the patient says it’s ok to leave messages, fax, and email, then there should be no problem. The doctor can have the patient sign a document giving permission for email.

If a person tells the IRS it’s OK with them if they (the IRS) transmit their personal financial or legal information via email, and sign a waiver allowing it, then the IRS should just do it instead of insisting on a fax?

@Dutchess_lll that’s not how it works the IRS or whomever has requirements THEY have to follow. You may think otherwise but they have to follow protocol !

You can’t tell them to break the law !

I know that Willie. I was asking JLeslie. Read back.
Doctors have the same legal restrictions. They HAVE to follow the rules. JLeslie feels that a signed waiver from the patient should be all that is needed to release the medical community from the HIPPA laws. I was asking her if the same signed waiver from a customer released the IRS from the laws governing their disclosure. The answer is “Of course not.”

ANYWAY the question is why a fax is more secure than an email and I think Zenvelo answered it.

Interesting thing about medical records. My health care network relies on all computerized records and post test results on lien for patients to retrieve them via password.

Doctors will send and receive email and leave messages on the phone with test results if you sign a document agreeing to it, but some doctors won’t. The doctors who won’t either cite HIPAA or say there is no email address to send it to (which how can anyone believe the doctors office doesn’t have any email address) or say they aren’t able to scan it. That is the BS.

Just a month ago my kidney function results were low, and when I called my doctor the girl on the phone said there were no test results for me. I told her I can email them to her, she said I can fax only. I told her to call Quest and get the results. A few days later I was near the office, they still hadn’t called me back, so I went in, they had done NOTHING. The man I was dealing with this time, I told him I can email it to him right now or log into my Quest on his computer, since your office doesn’t let me email, and he said, “that’s ok, you can email it to me, I’ll give you my email address.” It was a work email address so he could print it out for the doctor, it’s not like he gave me his personal gmail.

I emailed the lab results from the Quest Lab website, so obviously the patient can legally give permission to send medical data through email. Plus, it’s all on the net as @zenvelo also stated.

As far as the IRS, my accountant emails me my tax return! Same with my previous accountant. Same with the accountant who did the taxes for the guy who is Ed my business previous to me, he just sent me the previous owners final business tax return a few months ago when I needed it for the sale of my business. I have emailed all my paperwork for my taxes to my accountant at times. Most likely the IRS doesn’t email tax related things because it’s either impractical to scan documents, or they don’t want to risk emailing to the wrong person, but you can fax to the wrong person so that doesn’t necessarily make sense. Or, more likely they fear people will abuse the email and they will have a glut of unnecessary emails coming in.

Other parts of the government it seems completely legitimate to me to only hand carry documents and not put them on the computer at all, or not out on the net at minimum.

I am not talking about circumventing laws. I’m saying it’s legal to email with a patient’s permission under HIPAA. If the doctor cites HIPAA the signed permission is the way around, but some doctors just don’t want the email. As far as the government I don’t know the laws, but I’d think it partly depends on the type of materials and the practicality of emailing.

Just to add, all this doctor stuff and tax stuff can be mailed regular mail, it’s not person to person mail, and although it’s illegal to open someone else’s mail, it certainly isn’t secure. Mail travels through many hands and in many parts of America sits in an unlocked mailbox until picked up by the intended recipient.

@zenvelo I can access my regular doctor’s records online, though the patient portal, but apparently it’s a different situation with the hospital. I was told where to go online to fill out the form to request the specific records I wanted, but I have to fax the completed form. I can’t email it. But I gave instructions on the form for those records to be mailed.
And so here we are. I guess I’ll just fax it from the school I’m at today.

It just reminds me of 20 years ago when PCs were so new and people didn’t understand them. Once I called my bank and asked for some information. She found it and said she’d mail it. I asked if she could email it. She had no idea how that could be done. I told her to take a screen print then copy and paste it into an email. She’d never heard of that, and thought it was so cool.
As recently as 2013 I had a boss who just didn’t trust them thar computer things. Even different school I worked with didn’t know what a computer could do.
I didn’t think that could still be the reasoning behind the insistence—ignorance—so I asked this question.