When Government Goes Paperless: Cost Savings and Faster Service through Secure, Cloud-Based Digital Faxing

Case Story

Context

Many Government Transactions Depend on Manual Faxing Processes

Across the federal government, many transactions involving the exchange of protected health information (PHI) or personally identifiable information (PII) require the use of manual faxing. As part of its ongoing digital modernization initiatives, the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) implemented a cloud-based enterprise faxing service to enable the secure exchange of information historically shared via fax machine. Ultimately, the online faxing capability will be made available to all federal agencies, enhancing their own modernization efforts.

The Challenge

Manual Faxing is Inefficient, Costly, and Creating Barriers for Veterans

At VA, Veterans’ healthcare documents have historically been transferred between healthcare providers, benefit offices, and third-party insurers via traditional offline faxing technology. This approach requires maintaining individual fax capabilities in over 2,000 separate VA locations, with each paying separate server, hardware, maintenance, and telecommunication fees. The infrastructure is cumbersome, costly, difficult to scale, and less reliable and secure than cloud-based technology. Most importantly, it creates a barrier for Veterans accessing care and benefits in a timely manner due to a lack of visibility, transparency, and consistent support.
Eliminates need for multiple
faxing support contracts
Scalable and easy for
additional agencies to use

Our Innovative Solution

A Cloud-Based Digital Faxing Solution Enables Secure Information Exchange

VA launched the ECFax program to modernize the delivery of protected information. The first cloud-based digital faxing solution, approved for use by VA, ECFax enables the transformation, enhancement, and secure exchange of digital information.

ECFax is an exclusive partnership between Cognosante and Consensus Cloud Solutions and was developed specifically for the government. Built with a human-centered design approach, ECFax:

  • Simplifies fax workflows,
  • Improves the user experience,
  • Significantly reduces costs,
  • Eliminates the management of a dedicated fax environment in each location,
  • FedRAMP High Authorized (In Process),
  • Provides secure data transfer for PHI/PII, and
  • Offers a state-of-the-art faxing capability with 24/7 help desk support.
Overall security and cost savings already achieved
1.7 million+ pages
digitally faxed per week

Our Tangible Results

ECFax Streamlines Processes and Reduces Costs

Currently being implemented across the VA enterprise, faxes are delivered digitally across multiple endpoints, yielding operational efficiencies and reducing the need for standalone hardware.

Current sites are faxing over 1.7 million pages per week, and growing, (over 48 million to date) and seeing cost benefits through reduced administrative and technical support requirements, elimination of duplicative faxing support contracts, and separate hosting servers. The ECFax program and VA customer have received the following industry recognitions: a FORUM IT Innovation Award and GovCIO Media & Research Flywheel Health IT Innovation Champion Award.

VA’s senior leaders are gaining critical visibility and transparency regarding usage of this vital business process, which can be used to support further business transformation in government. Because ECFax Services was developed specifically for the cloud, additional federal agencies will also benefit from its rapid scaling, efficiency, and speed. Ready for use on a wider scale beyond VA, ECFax Services will soon be available via the FedRAMP Marketplace.

Learn more about how Cognosante is helping government organizations deliver services, bridging intentions to outcomes through digital transformation.

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