Government Bans Fax Machines In The NHS

[6Foot2]

Link: Government bans fax machines in the NHS [bBC News]

 

The NHS will be banned from buying fax machines from next month - and has been told by the government to phase out the machines entirely by 31 March 2020.

 

In July, the Royal College of Surgeons revealed nearly 9,000 fax machines were in use across the NHS in England.

 

The Department of Health said a change to more modern communication methods was needed to improve patient safety and cyber security.

 

An RCS spokesman said they supported the government's decision.

 

In place of fax machines, the Department of Health said secure email should be used...

 

Meanwhile my attempt to remove our two fax machines was rejected (again) recently.

 

[rich_tech]

Thats a good shout, we dont buy fax machines in our company anymore, we still have to send them and receive them though because of our dealings with the NHS and doctors surgeries with one of our companies.

 

Would recommend - http://www.faxtastic.co.uk as a decent alternative to having the machines, decent and reliable.

[smurfomatic]

We finally got rid of our fax machine recently, when someone realised that - in the process of upgrading to IP phones last year - the fax line had been disconnected...

[6Foot2]

We finally got rid of our fax machine recently, when someone realised that - in the process of upgrading to IP phones last year - the fax line had been disconnected...

By contrast when we moved over to IP phones it was REQUIRED of me that I made sure that the two fax machines continued working after the move was complete.

[Wubbalubbadub]

By contrast when we moved over to IP phones it was REQUIRED of me that I made sure that the two fax machines continued working after the move was complete.

This! £11 a month, line rental for the occasional fax! [emoji848]

[smurfomatic]

By contrast when we moved over to IP phones it was REQUIRED of me that I made sure that the two fax machines continued working after the move was complete.

 

As far as I can recall, we've not sent a fax (or received one that wasn't "spam") for a long time. The fact it took a year to notice it didn't work speaks volumes!

[FN-GM]

Non of our schools use fax and they had all been removed before they came under my management.

 

I don't think I have ever sent a fax. I wouldn't know how they work...

[6Foot2]

...I don't think I have ever sent a fax. I wouldn't know how they work...

Ouch! Suddely feeling SIGNIFICANTLY older...

[matt40k]

Would recommend - www.faxtastic.co.uk as a decent alternative to having the machines, decent and reliable.

Nope! Secure Email

[m25man]

Link: Government bans fax machines in the NHS [bBC News]

 

 

 

Meanwhile my attempt to remove our two fax machines was rejected (again) recently.

 

 

This fantastic news!

My own Fax number is xxxx 300300

Everyday I get faxes full of GDPR protected data delivered to my email from local NHS departments who don’t know how to use a fax machine so I get all sorts of private data the ICO would love to know about delivered to my inbox.

 

I’ve tried to escalate it through NHS IT but nobody cares, so I too have given up.

 

This should finally put an end to it...

[rich_tech]

Nope! Secure Email

 

Lol I saw that article and saw Secure email, we have that in use as well within one of our business, each staff site required a mobile phone for part of the password reset process there, it was fun.

 

I put that there should anyone require a service with faxes in this day and age, you could even port your numbers over to them I believe and anyone faxing to a number then can just have them redirected into an email inbox

 

I think a line with a private number on these only costs £30 a year, which is cheaper than £11 a month for line rental if its receive only, sending is cheap enough too on there, though we are a heavy user of it.

Edited December 9, 2018 by rich_tech

[AlanD]

Its fine to get rid of fax machines - but you also have to get rid of the processes that use them. Person A, needs to send B a request for information - and fills out a form that normally he would fax but now has to scan it, because its not electronic and no one knows how to change it to a online form. He doesn't have a scanner - so has to send it to someone else to do this. Then he emails the scanned form...and B prints it out to fill in the information required. B then scans it (or rather sends it someone else to scan because he neither has a scanner nor knows how to use one) a and emails the completed form back.

 

Much easier - just to use a fax machine. So while removing fax machines seems a great idea - someone has to invest in turning these operation into online forms....and there will be no money to do that..

[matt40k]

Fax as a Service isn't the answer.

 

I agree, they need to look at the problem and go, hey we could do this better - such as using online forms. But it's about to turn 2019. How many NHS Digital projects have there been? Yet here we are. If they are filling out a form electronically, printing it, then faxing it, even if they send the form as a .doc and someone at the other end is copy and paste the information into another system at the other end, it's better then them having to manually typing it in. I think they don't need one big massive project that run by some big company that will overrun, go over budget and never really hit it's targets. It needs micro improvements at individual parts of the NHS. Kinda like how Doctor's are using WhatsApp groups.

[mikeprice]

At my last school I tried to get rid of the Fax when we replaced the printers - I suggested that the fax function on the printers could be used instead

 

result - it was deemed to be complicated to use (press fax then type in the phone number) for the few times they use it

 

question - when did you last send or receive a fax

answer - no-one could remember - but certainly not in the last year

 

result - it is necessary to keep the fax because we need it

 

anyway - I'm not there any more - and it is useful as it has an open outside line which I used a lot (but just as a telephone!)

[googlemad]

My favourite NHS buzz word at the moment is 'paperlite' because they decided 'paperless' was perhaps a bit too ambitious!

[Sonic007]

About time they got rid of them.

The technology in the NHS is so outdated it needs a complete overhaul.

[synaesthesia]

About time they got rid of them.

The technology in the NHS is so outdated it needs a complete overhaul.

 

I'm sure Capita have been tasked with this more than once.

[Arthur]

The technology in the NHS is so outdated it needs a complete overhaul.

Good news on that front!

 

No fax given: Blighty's health service bods told to ban snail mail, too

 

The NHS, in England at least, will email patients directly rather than rely on snail mail, and organisations will be free to look beyond Accenture's NHSmail to send e-missives, under proposals from health secretary Matt Hancock.

 

"The rest of the world runs on email – and the NHS should too," Hancock said today at the NHS England conference.

 

He said the aim was for healthcare staff to contact patients with info about appointments or test results over email, rather than relying on post.

 

Hancock also emphasised that NHS organisations will be able to use any secure email provider – not just the health service's dedicated NHSmail, which is currently used by about 1.2 million staffers – if it meets security requirements.

 

In what could be seen as the government throwing down the gauntlet to Accenture, which won a five-year, £60m contract for NHSmail in 2015, the government said this was "so that NHS organisations can choose the best service for their needs and email providers are encouraged to innovate".

 

n a speech at the NHS England conference today, Hancock said that having to deal with outdated technology is "hugely frustrating" for both staff and patients, and "in many cases downright dangerous".

 

"A letter lost in the post could be the difference between life and death," he said – which is perhaps a reference to various incidents where clinical correspondence went missing.

 

In 2017, the government was forced to admit that almost 900,000 items had gone missing due to an error by NHS Shared Business Services, while Capita was fingered for failing to forward more than 150,000 clinical docs.

 

There have also been two major incidents with NHSmail in the past few years. Most recently, a fault in two separate data centres took the system down across all platforms for most of a day in December.

 

In 2016, the system was crippled as a test email sent in error to about 850,000 staffers resulted in reply-all chaos that saw 500 million messages being sent in 75 minutes.

 

Hancock's plan also includes a set of open standards on interoperability that all digital services and IT systems will have to meet.

 

Those that don't will be phased out and the government plans to end contracts with providers "that do not understand these principles for the health and care sector".

 

Faxes are also in the firing line: NHS organisations were banned from buying any new machines from January this year and they will be totally phased out by 31 March 2020.

 

"We have signalled the end of archaic fax machines in hospitals and GP practices, and as of this year the NHS will no longer buy them," said Hancock.

[6Foot2]

Good news on that front!

 

No fax given: Blighty's health service bods told to ban snail mail, too

 

The NHS, in England at least, will email patients directly rather than rely on snail mail, and organisations will be free to look beyond Accenture's NHSmail to send e-missives, under proposals from health secretary Matt Hancock...

This will have a detrimental effect upon people I know. They are not on broadband, do not know what E-Mail is, and use NHS services frequently, and, for many of them, I don't see that situation changing any time soon.

 

I agree that we have to move forward, but not at the cost of excluding portions of the population.

 

[FN-GM]

This will have a detrimental effect upon people I know. They are not on broadband, do not know what E-Mail is

 

My dad is one of those people.

 

I am waiting for a letter from the NHS at the moment - I need it pretty quick for work. I know its on the way as I spoke to them on the phone on Monday. Its a little annoying!

[mikeprice]

I would have missed my appointment at the fracture clinic a fw weeks ago as they sent it out by snail mail

My wife said the letter arrived 30 minutes after I left for the hospital - good job I rang them up to check!!

 

Annoying because I had left my email address with them but they didn't use it

[Arthur]

I agree that we have to move forward, but not at the cost of excluding portions of the population.

I find it hard to believe it would be a total ban, because that would just be stupid.

 

If it's anything like the current Patient Access system for contacting your GP, ordering repeat prescriptions etc., then there will be a provision for patients who don't have Internet access.

[mavhc]

None of these secure email services are anything but bollocks, if we've not exchanged keys offline it's pretty pointless

[matt40k]

This will have a detrimental effect upon people I know. They are not on broadband, do not know what E-Mail is, and use NHS services frequently, and, for many of them, I don't see that situation changing any time soon.

 

I agree that we have to move forward, but not at the cost of excluding portions of the population.

Surely if you build a solution for the app generation, that'll free up resources for the offline generation? You can also retro fix the old ways into the new like Google Duplex

[edividers]

Getting a SIP phone as a fax worked for us, £2 a month. Incoming faxes free but sending them 10p a page