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Faxing is growing in popularity

washingtonpost.com

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Re: Faxing is growing in popularity

#111

Post by fiddlerwoaroof »

basch wrote: post #109
dsfyu404ed wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Or worse the data doesnt get entered, and it ends up in a filing cabinet. God forbid that data not be vacuumed up never to be seen again except by the advertisers. /s A file cabinet in the back office probably handles most people's use cases for documents they receive by fax 90% as well as any digital solution with a heck of a lot less effort.

In the context of medical records, as a patient, id like to be able to download and transport my records without an office needing to pull out paper and copy it for me.

They can always scan them and send you the image.

Re: Faxing is growing in popularity

#112

Post by conductr »

newhotelowner wrote: post #21

Every single hotel that caters corporate clients in the USA still uses fax. We don't get reservations through fax, but that is the best way to get credit card authorization. A lot of corporate booking systems are automated to send out Fax for credit card authorization after they book the room online. Also, it's much better for our Front desk staff, as they don't have to constantly check the email. There is only 1 fax…

I have traveled quite a bit over the years and never been asked to fax. I just give card info over the phone

Re: Faxing is growing in popularity

#113

Post by mobilemidget »

reaperducer wrote: post #62
mobilemidget wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is an alternative, called internet. Faxing for CC authorizations certainly is not the best. Or I’m way confused and don’t understand your conditions of “best”

There is an alternative, called internet. I routinely stay in places that don't have internet service, either deliberately (ranches and luxury off-grid getaway places), or because there is no infrastructure. Internet isn't the solution to everything. In fact, some very high-end restaurants are now only taking reservations by telephone. And there was an article (NYT?) a few months ago about exclusive restaurants now o…

If you have a phone line to fax, you have a phone line to dial in to an isp. Then you can setup a secure connection? I don’t see the issue you are describing.

Also totally unclear how a reservation to eat compares to my credit card details going over plain phone line?

Google just wants market share in every market that exists.

Re: Faxing is growing in popularity

#114

Post by dwd »

Some countries never moved away from the fax: Japan and Israel in particular.

For legal documents that have to be sent in a timely manner and give you a verifiable receipt of delivery, you need to go with a fax rather than email.

Your fax isn't going to disappear without a trace due your email server not being reputable enough or looking like spam, or exceeding your delivery rate.

Re: Faxing is growing in popularity

#115

Post by PMan74 »

tim333 wrote: post #99
reaperducer wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How secure do I need my restaurant take-out order to be?

>By one private firm’s estimate, the fax accounts for about 75 percent of all medical communication https://www.vox.com/health-care/2017/10/30/16228054/american...

[UK's] NHS world's biggest fax machine buyer due to 'stubborn' resistance to new technology, say medical leaders

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2018/07/11/nhs-worlds-bigge...

Re: Faxing is growing in popularity

#116

Post by Qwertystop »

yellowapple wrote: post #88
newhotelowner wrote: post #21

Every single hotel that caters corporate clients in the USA still uses fax. We don't get reservations through fax, but that is the best way to get credit card authorization. A lot of corporate booking systems are automated to send out Fax for credit card authorization after they book the room online. Also, it's much better for our Front desk staff, as they don't have to constantly check the email. There is only 1 fax…

> Also, it's much better for our Front desk staff, as they don't have to constantly check the email. There is only 1 fax number, and anyone can send out the fax and whoever is working at the front desk gets a printed copy without doing anything. Seems like the answer here is to just have a "fax machine" but replace "phone number" with "email address" and automatically print any documents sent to it ("documents" being…

Now there's a spam filter and suddenly you get all the unreliability that comes with that from email (someone can claim the filter must have blocked it, and there's no proving otherwise).

Re: Faxing is growing in popularity

#117

Post by jedimastert »

TheOtherHobbes wrote: post #67
jedimastert wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm mildly concerned with how many people that aren't directly involved with my medical care could read those reports. It's not like they have to break open an envelope or a filing cabinet or something either. Just another piece of paper to be casually picked up and scanned for filing.

I know someone whose medical records - including full details of the removal of her brain tumour - were faxed to a hairdresser because the operator swapped a couple of digits in the number.

That thought gives me so much anxiety.

Re: Faxing is growing in popularity

#118

Post by giarc »

nradov wrote: post #91
giarc wrote: post #10

I work in healthcare and in my office we likely receive 100-200 pages of faxes everyday. Every single microbiology report in my large urban hospital prints out (including preliminary results. This includes a cover page for every single fax. It's a huge waste of paper. Luckily we are moving to Epic and all results will come through that system instead.

Epic will work fine for this, but every other EHR released in the past several years is also capable of receiving electronic microbiology reports. Your office must have been using something really obsolete before that.

The hospitals in my city were using Sunrise and the micro reports are included in Results tab but for some reason we still get faxes (legacy practices maybe). The problem is the province wanted one system across all sites. Currently there are a ton of different EMRs used by different hospitals that obviously don't talk to each other. So transferring a patient between sites, even down the road basically involves printing/photocopying every single piece of paper and physically sending it with the patient. I'm sure less than 5% of that ever gets read.

Re: Faxing is growing in popularity

#119

Post by conanbatt »

mywittyname wrote: post #71

> What happened was that competing companies deliberately created incompatible systems. Doctors’ offices and hospitals that use different records databases can’t communicate with each other digitally — but they can via fax. I cannot imagine why people prefer an established, well-documented, open exchange format over some closed, proprietary, and probably obfuscated one.

Dictatorship of the minority. If you have a subset that uses fax, then everyone needs to support fax, because otherwise you cant work.

Re: Faxing is growing in popularity

#120

Post by conanbatt »

wolrah wrote: post #40
YeahSureWhyNot wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

im not sure about dead easy to use? i have figured out how to use all the tech devices including old school iptv cameras, smart cash registers and connecting thermal receipt printers but the fax machine is absolutely the shittiest gadget i have had to deal with in my life despite being shown how to operate it multiple times.

The people who say faxes are easier than email are like the old mechanics who complain about how EFI is complicated and carbs were so much simpler. It's not actually any better, just a lot of people learned how to use it 20 years ago and don't want to learn anything new because they're wastes of space.

I'd say the opposite. Probably 99% of people in this thread has never sent a fax.
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