Fax Server
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Doesn't HIPAA compliancy in this situation depend on the company offering the service? That would be my job to ask the right questions and determine whether or not we can use them.
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Is it possible to route these to a folder within a network share using specific ports maybe?
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@wirestyle22 said:
Doesn't HIPAA compliancy in this situation depend on the company offering the service? That would be my job to ask the right questions and determine whether or not we can use them.
To some degree. It also depends on how you use them. And it depends on the technology.
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@wirestyle22 said:
Is it possible to route these to a folder within a network share using specific ports maybe?
I'm unsure what you are picturing. What kinds of ports and where?
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@wirestyle22 said:
Doesn't HIPAA compliancy in this situation depend on the company offering the service? That would be my job to ask the right questions and determine whether or not we can use them.
Correct. So in this case VOIPS.MS would have to have HIPAA compliant servers themselves, and ensure email based security when emailing you the faxes. Two things I'm sure VOIP.ms I'm guessing doesn't want to worry about.
All of the HIPAA compliant fax solutions I've seen so far are extremely expensive, on the order of $0.25/page or more. They won't email the faxes either. Instead they keep the faxes on their system where you have to log in via a secure web portal and then download them to your system.
We receive approximately 600 pages of faxes a day, 5 days a week, 12,600 a month. Currently because I handle everything in house storing to my already compliant storage, I pay $30/month for a phone line, and paid around $600 for a fax server. So my ongoing costs are very low.
The cheapest fax solution I looked at would have cost me nearly $900/month, plus I'd either have to setup a VPN to their servers (not a fan of) or log into their portal to download all of my faxes, using internet bandwidth, etc on top of the expense for the service.
They have all been a non starter for me.
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@scottalanmiller Sorry if I'm not articulating this properly. I'm wondering if I can specify a port and use port fowarding to define what to do with the files depending on the number used
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I may be complicating this or not grasping everything though. haven't had my coffee yet and I'm also having conversations while reading and writing so pardon me please
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@wirestyle22 said:
@scottalanmiller Sorry if I'm not articulating this properly. I'm wondering if I can specify a port and use port fowarding to define what to do with the files depending on the number used
So a call comes in, why not just put the file in the right place? Why send the file out of the network, back thruogh a filewall, make port mapper and a file translation program to read ports and choose file locations based on that?
I must be missing something. If you can specify a port, can't you specify a folder instead?
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@scottalanmiller I'm not sure if this is possible using http://voip.ms/ or services like it. From what I read it seems like everything is being filtered through VOIP.ms and then sent to us.
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Ultimately not sure
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@wirestyle22 said:
@scottalanmiller I'm not sure if this is possible using http://voip.ms/ or services like it. From what I read it seems like everything is being filtered through VOIP.ms and then sent to us.
Sent to you via what, though? What protocol?
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@scottalanmiller SIP and IAX2
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@wirestyle22 said:
@scottalanmiller I'm not sure if this is possible using http://voip.ms/ or services like it. From what I read it seems like everything is being filtered through VOIP.ms and then sent to us.
Yes, they receive the fax on their system, then they email the fax to you.
So unless they have all kinds of security in place, they can't do this for you in a HIPAA compliant way since they could read the faxes.
Of course, as Scott's going to point out - they could read the faxes anyway since all the traffic flows over their SIP trunks (unencrypted by default), they could just syphon off a copy of the transmission and make their own fax - this is why everyone says faxes really aren't secure. Anyone that can tap the wire can record the call and reproduce the fax.
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@wirestyle22 said:
@scottalanmiller SIP and IAX2
VOIP.ms don't use SIP IAX2 to send the fax to you, they send it to your email address. JB's post shows that in his screen shot.
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@Dashrender What do we do if we can't abandon faxing and we also have HIPAA compliance to worry about?
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@Dashrender I assumed that but wasn't 100%
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Your least expensive option will be to get a SIP trunk that terminates to either a dedicated fax server and can handle X amount of incoming faxes at the same time. X being the number of incoming faxes you need to be able to support.
One example of this would be a FreePBX system.
You could stand up a FreePBX for the sole purpose of doing this. Get a SIP trunk that supports faxing (JB likes VOIP.ms - but you can ask who else other people like).
Then you setup DIDs on the SIP trunk you purchased.
Inside FreePBX you setup rules for each DID, when a fax comes in on DID1 - save the file network location1, DID2 - location2, etc.This would require you having hardware to run FreePBX on (a VM platform would be great and not use a lot of resources), the SIP trunk and the DIDs.
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@wirestyle22 said:
@scottalanmiller SIP and IAX2
If that is the case, you look at the DID and send the file wherever you determine. No need to look at ports, IPs or anything IP networking related. You look at the payload.
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@wirestyle22 said:
@Dashrender What do we do if we can't abandon faxing and we also have HIPAA compliance to worry about?
Well some of us would argue that the two are mutually exclusive
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@scottalanmiller lol
