POTS line replacement
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@Dashrender said in POTS line replacement:
@pmoncho said in POTS line replacement:
I have been pushing my clients with MFP's scan/print to PDF and send via encrypted email. Just cannot seem to convince the remaining clients to change.
Sadly that is entirely to much effort for them to invest. If their IT can make it happen, the device could send to an email address of their own- then run a process that then emails any attachments to that address to you via encrypted email.
another option - one my EMR is investigating - IF their MFP support scan to secure FTP - you could setup a secure FTP site, provide credentials to your customers (different for each) and your customers could update the MFP to save to the secure FTP site. This leaves the amount of work for the end users to be exactly the same - choose your company from the phonebook, drop the pages on the ADF, press go - done. Should be the same as faxing.
Ohhhh. This is something to look into. I have a client that just may want to test this out.
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@scottalanmiller said in POTS line replacement:
@pmoncho said in POTS line replacement:
I looked at the total faxes pages for the last 45 days and we have roughly 9000 pages of faxes.
wow
I know. Tell me about it. Trying to work with the LOB app developer to figure out how the heck we can cut that down.
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@scottalanmiller said in POTS line replacement:
@pmoncho said in POTS line replacement:
I have been pushing my clients with MFP's scan/print to PDF and send via encrypted email. Just cannot seem to convince the remaining clients to change.
When you say "encrypted", do you mean normal email (which is encrypted.) Or what people call "encrypted email" which isn't email at all and is often a huge pain.
The latter. We use Barracuda for email scanning and with the service we can use their web portal to upload/download any attachments.
EDIT: Expanding on this after reading the discussion between Dash and Scott.
When we send out "encrypted" email with some form of the word "Encrypt" in the subject line, our internal email uses SSL/TLS to Barracuda and then Barracuda stores the email. Our user logs into Barracuda website to retrieve the download if needed.
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@Dashrender said in POTS line replacement:
@pmoncho said in POTS line replacement:
I looked at the total faxes pages for the last 45 days and we have roughly 9000 pages of faxes.
I just can't recall how many pages a month we do when I last looked, but I do recall the monthly charge from a 'fax service' was going to be around $900/month. I didn't even bother bringing that to management - there was less than 1% chance of that happening.
Bringing in faxes to our own physical machines, then saving to a network share was costing around $30/month per line (we have three). We might be able to save money moving to using full on VOIP from VOIP.ms or Skyetel, but that project has been to high on the tree. I say full on VOIP because Cox (our local dial tone provider) is all VOIP behind the equipment they drop on our doorstep, from there it's analog. We have had the typical VOIP related issues - Cox's network had a HUGE amount of line noise on coax causing packet loss which caused faxes to fail like crazy - after 6 months they finally found some bad taps at neighbors up the street and fixed the cable issue, which fixed our fax failure issue.
Well that is interesting. Some fax service I looked at were capped at around 3000 pages for $100 then per page goes nuts after that. Still looking though.
Using our Hylafax server with a Samba Share has worked well for a while especially when we were getting even more faxes but the lines only costed us $24 per line which included calling anywhere in the 48 States.
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@pmoncho said in POTS line replacement:
Using our Hylafax server with a Samba Share has worked well for a while especially when we were getting even more faxes but the lines only costed us $24 per line which included calling anywhere in the 48 States.
Exactly - no service comes even close in cost for the amount of faxes that you and I are looking at - I want to say I was north of 7000 pages a month when I was last looking.
I have a few small clients who receive their faxes through their FreePBX. FreePBX then emails it to their O365 tenant, where a powerautomation script runs, pulls out the attachment and puts it into a sharepoint site.
The users all have that folder in sharepoint pinned in their OneDrive for Business - in the end, the users just see files showing up in a 'network share' - which they can easily upload into their EMR.
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Of course that doesn't solve the sending issue. People just don't want to deal with scanning a document, then uploading to a service, then sending from that service, etc...
They want to walk to the machine choose from the address book and hit send.
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We are lucky - our EMR includes faxing service (in and out). While we still have a not insignificant amount of physical paper to send out, the EMR handing that is generally pretty nice - expect when there are problems, then they blame it 100% on the sending/receiving side, it's never a problem on my EMR's side. /sigh.
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@Dashrender said in POTS line replacement:
@scottalanmiller said in POTS line replacement:
@Dashrender said in POTS line replacement:
@scottalanmiller said in POTS line replacement:
@Dashrender said in POTS line replacement:
@scottalanmiller said in POTS line replacement:
@pmoncho said in POTS line replacement:
I have been pushing my clients with MFP's scan/print to PDF and send via encrypted email. Just cannot seem to convince the remaining clients to change.
When you say "encrypted", do you mean normal email (which is encrypted.) Or what people call "encrypted email" which isn't email at all and is often a huge pain.
This is oversimplifying things. While the number is small, and getting smaller - some email providers still do not support SSL/TLS SMTP connections. Of course - the OP could setup their own rule saying, if someone tries to sent them email that isn't on SSL/TLS, don't accept, he'd likely need management approval for that.
It's not. In the same way someone using "encrypted mail" could unencrypt it and distribute things on their end. In both cases, once you hand off, the issue is theirs not yours. That's all encryption ever means. You never control it once they've take responsibility for it.
You're missing the whole encrypted part - not even talking about the sharing shit part.
if you don't have SSL/TLS encryption on transmission, then you don't have HIPAA compliance - so to say all email is encrypted is wrong. - sure 99%+ is because most SMTP now allow for opportunistic TLS, but not all do.
Sure, but it's a pointless argument. Set your email correctly and voila, as you know. You should not have your email set up incorrectly. It's that simple.
uh - what? You don't get to control the other side, only your own side - and I'm guessing that you don't reject all non SSL/TLS connected transmissions, which would be the only thing you could control.
Exactly, you only control your offer of security, nothing more. Ever.
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@pmoncho said in POTS line replacement:
@scottalanmiller said in POTS line replacement:
@pmoncho said in POTS line replacement:
I have been pushing my clients with MFP's scan/print to PDF and send via encrypted email. Just cannot seem to convince the remaining clients to change.
When you say "encrypted", do you mean normal email (which is encrypted.) Or what people call "encrypted email" which isn't email at all and is often a huge pain.
The latter. We use Barracuda for email scanning and with the service we can use their web portal to upload/download any attachments.
EDIT: Expanding on this after reading the discussion between Dash and Scott.
When we send out "encrypted" email with some form of the word "Encrypt" in the subject line, our internal email uses SSL/TLS to Barracuda and then Barracuda stores the email. Our user logs into Barracuda website to retrieve the download if needed.
Yeah, as a user (either side) I hate that stuff. First, it isn't an email so I hate receiving that stuff because obviously it's just a web page with my files, it should be called that. Pretending it is email isn't cool. But also, it's a pain to use. I'm in email because I want email and I have secure email so that stuff like this never needs to happen. There is a reason why end users balk at that fake email marketing stuff.
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@Dashrender said in POTS line replacement:
Of course that doesn't solve the sending issue. People just don't want to deal with scanning a document, then uploading to a service, then sending from that service, etc...
They want to walk to the machine choose from the address book and hit send.
Which only happens if you have paper already, start by solving that and that paper based machine gets super complicated.
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@scottalanmiller said in POTS line replacement:
@Dashrender said in POTS line replacement:
Of course that doesn't solve the sending issue. People just don't want to deal with scanning a document, then uploading to a service, then sending from that service, etc...
They want to walk to the machine choose from the address book and hit send.
Which only happens if you have paper already, start by solving that and that paper based machine gets super complicated.
I can't demand other parties not use the forms they force on us. And I'm in no position to force the company to use another vendor who has better processes (and clearly most management won't either).
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@Dashrender said in POTS line replacement:
@scottalanmiller said in POTS line replacement:
@Dashrender said in POTS line replacement:
Of course that doesn't solve the sending issue. People just don't want to deal with scanning a document, then uploading to a service, then sending from that service, etc...
They want to walk to the machine choose from the address book and hit send.
Which only happens if you have paper already, start by solving that and that paper based machine gets super complicated.
I can't demand other parties not use the forms they force on us. And I'm in no position to force the company to use another vendor who has better processes (and clearly most management won't either).
The point is you said people weren't willing to do things that are harder. yet clearly that is false, they are opting ot make it hard. your users are making it a pain on purpose according to your last response. YOU aren't in aposition to make it easy, so what? Your users sure are.
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@Dashrender said in POTS line replacement:
Of course that doesn't solve the sending issue. People just don't want to deal with scanning a document, then uploading to a service, then sending from that service, etc...
They want to walk to the machine choose from the address book and hit send.
Offices with an EMR are easier to transition as they can just print to PDF, open website to reply with attachment and done. Some of these PDFs are 50-80 pages too, so they actually save time and money (long distance) if the fax bombs out half way through.
The older providers who still want that paper are a challenge as you stated.
IMHO, interfaces with strict, well defined standards are the key to removing these challenges. HL7 is as bastardized as ANSI5010.
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@pmoncho said in POTS line replacement:
@Dashrender said in POTS line replacement:
Of course that doesn't solve the sending issue. People just don't want to deal with scanning a document, then uploading to a service, then sending from that service, etc...
They want to walk to the machine choose from the address book and hit send.
Offices with an EMR are easier to transition as they can just print to PDF, open website to reply with attachment and done. Some of these PDFs are 50-80 pages too, so they actually save time and money (long distance) if the fax bombs out half way through.
yeah, this is a constant issue for us.
We have some people who have fully embraced the PDF print/upload solution. Then we have those who just push back against pretty much any change.
Our EMR has two ways to get a piece of paper into it.
a)- scan document
- open patient chart
- upload file
- label file
b)
- open patient chart
- create label
- print label and place on document
- scan document
- upload document (automated process sorts document into desired location)
forgotten step - make sure document appears
There is actually yet another process
c)- open patient chart
- create label
- print label and place on document
- fax document (automated process sorts document into desired location based on barcode)
forgotten step - make sure document appears
While the number of arguable steps is the same as the first option, it does have the added expense of the label.
If you need to make sure the document actually arrived - then you are absolutely spending more time on option C than option A. -
@pmoncho said in POTS line replacement:
I have been pushing my clients with MFP's scan/print to PDF and send via encrypted email. Just cannot seem to convince the remaining clients to change.
You can convince people with incentives, but not with reasoning and logic.
For example by offering them to send documents through email (free) and through fax (surcharge per page).
It's the same as what the operators are doing to you. They are giving you an incentive to move away from POTS by increasing the cost.
Would you look at options if the cost didn't go up?
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@Dashrender said in POTS line replacement:
@pmoncho said in POTS line replacement:
@Dashrender said in POTS line replacement:
Of course that doesn't solve the sending issue. People just don't want to deal with scanning a document, then uploading to a service, then sending from that service, etc...
They want to walk to the machine choose from the address book and hit send.
Offices with an EMR are easier to transition as they can just print to PDF, open website to reply with attachment and done. Some of these PDFs are 50-80 pages too, so they actually save time and money (long distance) if the fax bombs out half way through.
yeah, this is a constant issue for us.
We have some people who have fully embraced the PDF print/upload solution. Then we have those who just push back against pretty much any change.
Since when did we become coworkers?
The world is small when people are people no matter where you turn.
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@Dashrender said in POTS line replacement:
@pmoncho said in POTS line replacement:
@Dashrender said in POTS line replacement:
Our EMR has two ways to get a piece of paper into it.
a)- scan document
- open patient chart
- upload file
- label file
b)
- open patient chart
- create label
- print label and place on document
- scan document
- upload document (automated process sorts document into desired location)
forgotten step - make sure document appears
There is actually yet another process
c)- open patient chart
- create label
- print label and place on document
- fax document (automated process sorts document into desired location based on barcode)
forgotten step - make sure document appears
While the number of arguable steps is the same as the first option, it does have the added expense of the label.
If you need to make sure the document actually arrived - then you are absolutely spending more time on option C than option A.We have a similar process with our practice management software for scanning cards and charge sheets.
If there is paper to start and confirmation is needed, then I don't see how the process can be cut down any further than what is there other than automating the file name, watermark the barcode and the software "filing" the doc in the system against the patient.
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@pmoncho said in POTS line replacement:
If there is paper to start and confirmation is needed, then I don't see how the process can be cut down any further than what is there other than automating the file name, watermark the barcode and the software "filing" the doc in the system against the patient.
Exactly.
In our case, a person must tell the system what type of document it is, and what do do with it once it's uploaded. That can either be done, and the output generates a barcode - the barcode goes on the page - then scan/upload to the sytem.
OR the person scan/uploads the document - then while confirming it's on the screen - they tell what kind of document it is and what to do with it.To me the barcode is a huge waste of everything. AND introduces a failure point (what if the scan does a bad job on the barcode?
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@Pete-S said in POTS line replacement:
@pmoncho said in POTS line replacement:
I have been pushing my clients with MFP's scan/print to PDF and send via encrypted email. Just cannot seem to convince the remaining clients to change.
You can convince people with incentives, but not with reasoning and logic.
For example by offering them to send documents through email (free) and through fax (surcharge per page).
It's the same as what the operators are doing to you. They are giving you an incentive to move away from POTS by increasing the cost.
Would you look at options if the cost didn't go up?
Good point Pete. I may bring this up to the VP when we discuss this further.
I was looking at the price quote from AT&T and I still don't like the cost as they still want to charge $45 per line with free US calling. May have no choice with the Fire Alarm but the fax lines will definitely be going down a different route.
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@JaredBusch said in POTS line replacement:
@pmoncho said in POTS line replacement:
We also kept one other POTS line for our main fax line also (not my call).
So sorry. Look into http://faxback.com
This is the service that Skyetel uses under the hood for their HTTPS based ATA fax device. If you already have Skyetel service, then just use it there.I was looking at this site.
If I understand this correctly, they are selling Fax server software and this device. I would still need to get a SIP line/Number from someone like Skyetel/Ring Central (I know I may not have the terminology correct)?
