No Fax Friday on October 12th, 2018
Many healthcare providers are tied to their fax machines to correspond with patients as well as other medical providers their patients are working with. Not only does this use a lot of paper, but it’s also time-consuming and expensive to continually fax documents throughout the workday. That’s exactly what No Fax Friday 2018 is trying to solve. Learn more about the challenge to see how your office can benefit from turning off that fax machine for a day.
What Is It?
No Fax Friday formed after the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) Administrator Seema Verma established a goal to have all fax machines eliminated from provider offices by 2020. The announcement is part of an effort to streamline the prior authorization process and improve communication with patients and other providers.
Steve Posnack, with the Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT, encouraged everyone to participate in No Fax Friday 2018 as the first step in the process.
When Is No Fax Friday 2018?
No Fax Friday is on October 12, 2018. ICANotes is sponsoring the challenge in partnership with Kno2. We want to encourage physicians and mental health providers that you don’t need a fax machine to improve patient care and communication. It’s an opportunity to utilize your EHR to its fullest potential, whether you’re using it for charting, billing or integrations.
Benefits of an EHR for Users and Physicians
There are numerous benefits to using an EHR over a fax machine and participating in No Fax Friday. First, it lends itself to greater interoperability between different physicians and mental healthcare providers. Instead of faxing a document to another physician, you can submit everything electronically using an EHR.
It also streamlines the entire prior authorization process. It will reduce the paperwork your office handles and save you time so that you can provide quality care to your patients. Some larger groups even hire additional staff to work on prior authorization paperwork whether it’s by fax, the phone or mail. By switching to an EHR, you can set-up a provider portal or an electronic request to communicate with your patients for billing, paperwork or other administrative functions.
You can also save money with No Fax Friday 2018. A study by the Council for Affordable Quality Healthcare (CAQH) found that providers and payers communicate by phone or fax 90 percent of the time. It costs $5.75 to complete prior authorization transactions manually. However, completing it electronically is only $2.55. It is a straightforward way to save money.
Participate in No Fax Friday 2018
Make sure your office is ready to eliminate fax machines by 2020 by taking part in No Fax Friday. Then you can see the benefits of working with an EHR and increase the time you spend with patients. Contact us to learn more or to request a free trial of our behavioral health EHR software.
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