alt Hacker NewsUnder HIPAA requirements emailing personal medical info is a massive no-no. Admittedly, this is for the patient's protection, and of course being blind is not much of a secret... but it's completely understandable that email would be strongly discouraged. Nobody wants to get in trouble for breaking the rules.
Honestly, being able to accept a fax is great, although I would think any properly outfitted modern office that does accept fax would be able to route them straight to document storage rather than a printer. There are probably even internet services that can just act as a fax dumpster and hold PDF/image file for perusal at one's leisure. Yes even the govt can figure this sort of thing out.
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> Under HIPAA requirements emailing personal medical info is a massive no-no.
Doesn’t that only apply to covered entities, which the internet is telling me does not include the Social Security Administration.
It's also funny because at work our fax machines don't print unless we go over and print it. The machine just converts the fax to PDF.
This is an indictment of email more than anything.
Reminds me of a typical conservation with my bank
“Hello sir, before we get started, for security measures, please provide this information about your account”
Hmm I dont have this on hand, let me log in to my account and look at the settings and read it verbatim back to you, proving I’m not compromising this user at all
“Thank you, sir!”
Is this an outdated requirement? What's the attack surface of an email vs fax? Unless they ban phones at the office, someone could just take a photo of the documents the patient faxed or mailed them