Simon James wrote:
Hi all,
I'm knocking together an article on "paperless fax solutions" for my
forthcoming edition. I'm looking to break this up into coverage of:
1. Traditional paper fax (very brief)
2. MFC fax options (brief)
3. Internet fax (ie email-fax, web-fax)
4. Modem fax
Was wondering what products/solutions people using options 2-4 have
deployed? Experiences?
My practice uses the fax system integrated into Microsoft Small Business
Server 2003. Any document that we write, whether in Medical Director or
Word etc. that we could print on paper can be "printed" to the fax
system. When we choose to do this (and I do this many times each day),
a dialogue box appears with the practice's shared Outlook address book,
in which all email addresses and fax numbers that we use are stored. I
select the correct person or organisation, and away my letter goes via
the modem connected to the server. No paper involved at our end. I
love it.
The other thing that I really like is that the system automatically
reports to me in an email message the fate of each faxed document, so I
know whether it was successfully received or not. Each of these
messages contains the TIF image of what was sent, so I can see exactly
what was received at the other end - not just how it looked to me in
Medical Director or Word. I treasure all of these delivery messages and
store them in a special purpose folder for ever. They have been very
useful to have when somebody says they didn't receive my message, and I
can show them exactly what they received and when, or I have to re-send
it because of a failure at the other end, or wrong fax number etc.
The other important side of faxing is *receiving* faxes. We found when
we allowed all incoming faxes to print that many of them we just needed
to glance at and then throw them away. This seemed fairly wasteful of
our paper and toner. Now, via the SBS system, incoming faxes are
received in the receptionist's email inbox box as images, and she looks
at them and triages them. Faxes about patients she imports into the
patient's electronic record, and forwards the email with the image to
the relevant doctor, who just views it, knowing that a copy is already
in the patient's record. Non clinical ones for doctors are just
forwarded to them - the doctors view and delete them or can print any
that they need on paper. Junk faxes (e.g. advertising) are just deleted
by the receptionist. This is working very well.
We really need to make the point that faxing is not an advanced or very
efficient technology. It delivers images, not data, and it delivers
those images to only one point in the practice. We need to explain very
clearly that the *only* place that we really want information about a
patient is in the patient's electronic record. By far the most
efficient way to achieve this is that all messages about patients from
anybody at all are sent via the Argus clinical messaging system, which
delivers messages directly into our clinical in box, from where we can
easily file them into the patient's electronic record.
--
Oliver Frank, general practitioner
255 North East Road, Hampstead Gardens, South Australia 5086
Phone 08 8261 1355 Fax 08 8266 5149 Mobile 0407 181 683
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