University of Illinois Hospital & Health Sciences System Streamlines Healthcare Workflows with Cloud Faxing Solution
University of Illinois Hospital & Health Sciences System (UI Health), provides comprehensive care, medical education, and health research to serve the health needs of communities in Illinois and beyond. Operating an eight-floor hospital, with multiple departments in Chicago, Ill., UI Health exchanges critical communications relating to patient care, medical records, administrative functions, and regulatory compliance.
Gordon Flesch Company (GFC), an experienced business technology solutions dealer, teamed up with ETHERFAX to help resolve UI Health’s faxing infrastructure issues. UI Health previously relied on a different faxing solution for outbound faxing from Epic-based EHR software. This outdated legacy faxing solution was causing persistent issues with the fax servers—disrupting critical workflows.
Challenge
UI Health experienced frequent issues with outbound faxes failing to send or getting stuck in the transmission process. For example, faxes with dozens of pages containing critical patient charts often remained stalled for nearly 60 minutes. Given UI Health’s high fax volume—thousands of faxes per month—these delayed documents led to downstream workflow delays and patient care inefficiencies. UI Health required a more reliable and scalable fax solution. Additionally, the organization sought to reduce the high costs associated with maintaining their legacy fax infrastructure.
Solution
ETHERFAX recommended its direct Epic integration for UI Health, ensuring a seamless and dependable faxing process. ETHERFAX’s Epic integration enables the secure and efficient exchange of high-resolution documents directly from Epic’s interface, eliminating the need for additional hardware or ongoing infrastructure maintenance. This integration improves document delivery speed, enhances security, and ensures compliance with HIPAA regulations.
Furthermore, with the assistance of GFC, UI Health’s 115 Lexmark devices were connected to ETHERFAX, streamlining fax workflows across the hospital. By leveraging ETHERFAX’s cloud-based infrastructure, UI Health reduced the workload burden on their internal IT team and streamlined fax workflows across the hospital by ensuring consistent equipment uptime and improved reliability.
Results
Since deploying ETHERFAX, UI Health has achieved significant improvements in reliability and efficiency. The hospital now sends more than a million faxes per year with fast transmission speeds and guaranteed delivery. By switching their faxing solution to ETHERFAX, UI Health has reduced its legacy infrastructure footprint by 50% and has seen a reduction in support tickets related to fax, realizing substantial savings and streamlining workflows. Incidents related to Epic faxing have significantly decreased, and ETHERFAX has been instrumental in eliminating most of the voice gateways, thus improving reliability.
Andrew Mosio, Director of Technology and Service Delivery at UI Health, highlights the impact of the transition, stating, “ETHERFAX’s cloud-based infrastructure has improved fax reliability, ensuring that critical patient information is securely transmitted without disruption. Additionally, GFC provides timely customer support and service, when needed.”
ETHERFAX’s cloud-based infrastructure has improved fax reliability, ensuring that critical patient information is securely transmitted without disruption. Additionally, GFC provides timely customer support and service when needed.
Andrew Mosio
Director of Technology and Service Delivery, UI Health
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