Fax Chronicle

I know of at least one Internet Fax provider that sent test lab results to the wrong numbers. I wonder how long until the authorities figure out how dangerous this can be. Hospitals wrongly send out information – 05/20/2007 – MiamiHerald.com

At his Miami Beach home, David Neal received a fax revealing excruciating details about the rectal problems of a 67-year-old woman. In Kendall, Helen Lie’s home fax machine spewed out the results of someone’s blood test for a sexual disease.Both Neal and Lie say they have repeatedly received such faxes, including patients’ names and other personal details — clear violations of strict federal privacy laws on healthcare records. Experts say such mistakes happen frequently. In most cases, the cause appears to be a healthcare worker mis-dialing a phone number on a fax machine — a device that remains a basic standard of communication in the healthcare industry despite being utterly out-of-date in the 21st century, experts say. Laurence Gardner, executive dean of education at the University of Miami medical school, says such mistakes occur at UM/Jackson Memorial and many other places. ”We don’t like to think it does, but it happens everywhere with a level of frequency we don’t like to admit,” he says.