Seeing is Believing: Mid-Hudson Family Ophthalmology needed a secure fax environment and a vendor with a personal touch
When it was time to change fax providers, the team at Mid-Hudson Family Ophthalmology wanted more than “one size fits all” pricing quotes and an FAQ web page. They wanted to ask some questions and speak to real humans about the process. When they reached out to Concord Technologies, they got what they wanted.
“I reached out to two other companies, and no one wanted to take a phone call,” recalls Hilda Pol, Practice Administrator. “Everything was via the computer, and I wanted someone to call me and go over pricing. When I called Concord, though, I spoke with someone who gave me information about all the different services and options, and that let me create some recommendations to Dr. Sauer, our practice owner.”
The practice, which is based in Middletown, NY, provides pediatric and general ophthalmology as well as Strabismus (misaligned eyes) treatment. It had been using a fax-delivery service that was becoming outdated and unable to keep up with new office technology, so on the recommendation of its IT technicians began the search for a more comprehensive cloud fax provider that could grow alongside the practice.
“All of our upgrades with Microsoft alone meant that what we had in place was not going to be supported,” Pol explains. “We needed an actual cloud fax provider, not just lines and an actual fax machine. We also were having problems sending outbound faxes — busy signals, messages that the faxes weren’t going through, the queue was out of memory. We’re a small practice, and our little printer and the fax machine just couldn’t keep up with the volume.”
A turnkey, secure and reliable solution
Now, with Concord Cloud Fax, Pol and her colleagues know that faxes are received swiftly and securely into a designated inbox within their email system. From there, documents can be attached to patient charts, routed to other providers, printed if need be, or used in other workflows as required. And getting there was easy.
“Before, we were so old-school: The doctor would give someone a whole bundle of files to be faxed out, and each had to have a cover sheet created with the name of the receiving doctor, their fax number and a lot of other information all typed out. We’d do all that, and then hope for the best.”
And now? “Every one of the changes has worked to our advantage,” Pol says. “Concord worked with us to get the fax lines ported over, and we were up and running again in a very timely manner. Everything is HIPAA complaint, and the system fits all our needs. Now faxes come into a folder and are distributed as a PDF or a Word document. We can shoot them right into a patient’s chart without having to print and scan and all those steps. We can do chart reviews from insurance companies, add notes, and send it all back while staying paperless, which was a longtime goal of ours.”
The Concord team was also able to get the system up and running during a trying time at the practice.
“We had a lot of people out sick, and they were so patient with us,” Pol says. “We worked through making test cover sheets and so much else so we could use the Concord system, which was very easy to learn. They really hung in there to make sure we were up and running.”
And as for Concord Cloud Fax itself, “It’s saved us time and paper, as well as improved our productivity since we’re no longer spending a lot of time going to and from the fax machine.”
Company
Mid-Hudson Family Ophthalmology
Industry
Healthcare
Headquarters
New York
Website
www.eyesofallsize.com
The Problem
An aging, landline-based fax system that could not integrate with current computer technology or provide secure, reliable faxing services.
The Solution
- Concord Cloud Fax replaced an existing in-house standalone fax machine serviced by an outside vendor.
- The practice now uses Concord’s Email2Fax and Print2Fax for outbound transmissions, and Email2Fax and FaxAssist for inbound transmissions.
- In addition to time savings from eliminating manual faxing, the practice has also realized significant savings on paper, toner and physical supplies while also moving closer to its goal of paperless operations.