Integra Group Creates Secure Fax Solution with ETHERFAX
Based in Anacortes, Washington, Integra Group, LLC was founded in 2001 with the ambitious goal to remove all paper from institutional pharmacies. They wanted to manage not just document storage, but incoming work orders for their customers. To achieve this, Integra needed a secure fax solution for pharmacies to process their orders. Today, Integra specializes in the design and development of mission-critical software systems, helping pharmacies manage all aspects of healthcare-critical data.
Challenge
Integra takes what is physical for pharmacies such as orders, paper records, and other paper objects, and converts them into work items to prioritize and schedule orders in a way they can’t do physically. Essentially, they have created a shrink wrap solution that encompasses all document transport to fit pharmacy needs.
Their market is unique – a majority of their customers are mass production pharmacies that have created a ‘one-op’ process, filling their orders in assembly line fashion to process orders in the most expedited manner. For pharmacies that have low IT skills and small budgets that aren’t able to accommodate for a transition to a cloud-based environment, namely the recent transition from fax servers to fax boards, Integra serves to provide top-quality customer service, redundancy, speed and security in their solution.
Louie Foster, Director of Product Management at Integra Group, outlined how cloud technology sparked a transition from fax servers to fax boards in the pharmacy industry, but caused some problems.
According to Foster, Integra’s customer base is more fax aware, specifically to their clients, than any other industry. If a pharmacy doesn’t receive an order for some reason – that’s a big deal. ETHERFAX provides not just the built-in redundancy but the security capabilities for healthcare providers and pharmacies to communicate with one another.
In a pharmacy, the main method of transmitting healthcare-critical information is fax. Fax servers were used historically, but over the years, pharmacies slowly began making the transition to fax boards. In the beginning stages, Integra partnered with a global leader in Enterprise Information Management (EIM) to provide more stability in this transition.
Integra’s customers were experiencing failures and not receiving all of their faxes during system downtime. This meant more support calls to Integra. In addition, they needed a solution that would integrate Portable Document Format (PDF) in order for their customers to satisfy high accountability requirements set down by individual state’s board of pharmacies. Integra’s earlier integration wasn’t able to adapt for this need.
ETHERFAX could both account for this and reduce IT complexity and development effort for Integra without compromising speed or security for pharmacy customers.
Solution
Integra signed with ETHERFAX in 2013 and rolled out their solution, Integra Cloud Fax Services, backing into their product DocuTrack which is supported by ETHERFAX technology. With the integration of ETHERFAX, Integra was able to wash its hands of antiquated FoIP and VoIP technology.
Initially, Integra was interested in providing a better Disaster Recovery (DR) solution to solve the downtime problem their pharmacy customers were experiencing. Impressed with the ETHERFAX solution’s technology, they decided to implement a full fax solution.
ETHERFAX looked at the Integra business as a whole to see what they needed and helped solve several problems: they implemented umbrella pricing, fixed redundancy issues and provided presented a compelling solution for the industry that provided speed and security in accordance with healthcare compliance laws such as the federal Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA).
The industry is currently experiencing a consolidation of independent pharmacies into regional chains. These businesses only want one installation. Integra can now provide this with the DocuTrack integration of ETHERFAX.
Results
The implementation of ETHERFAX reduced Integra’s support calls by more than half when compared to fax server solutions. Since the implementation, Integra has seen interest from a broader market on fringe healthcare and finance businesses in need of a faxing solution.
ETHERFAX also provided some extra benefits that ended up being specifically valuable to the healthcare market. They provided the ability for pharmacies to specify specific caller IDs on their client’s fax machine by internal department. This was a big deal, as previously pharmacies had been changing the headers on their fax sheets to a general business name that didn’t include the fax number.
In addition, Integra was impressed that it only takes one API to send a fax, helping Integra to quickly implement a robust solution. Integra now sends up to 1.6 million faxes a month, with that number quickly approaching to 2 million.
We really focus on providing outstanding customer service, providing pharmacies with a solution that has built-in redundancy, speed and security to match their needs. ETHERFAX’s values align with ours and helped us not only reduce the amount of customer service calls, but gave us the opportunity to provide a compelling solution for our target customer.
Louie Foster
Director of Product Management, Integra Group
ETHERFAX is a company that has integrity, which is what we look for in a partner. They are made up of some of the best minds in the secure document transport industry, helping us to provide a better fax solution for our customers.
Louie Foster
Director of Product Management, Integra Group
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From optimizing communication within a healthcare network to streamlining document exchange in a corporate environment or enhancing compliance with regulatory standards, ETHERFAX offers a versatile solution that can address diverse business needs and deliver tangible benefits. View our case studies to learn how.