How Piedmont Scaled Care With Cloud-Based Fax Technology

Healthcare IT teams will feel a bigger push to modernize their IT infrastructure in the cloud given the need to manage rising volumes of data and strengthen information exchange, leading analysts believe. At one Georgia health system, the move to the cloud stabilized operations after a supercharged path to growth. It also set the stage for innovation.

Piedmont grew from six hospitals to 27 in a 10-year period to become one of Georgia’s largest health systems. Leaders sought to integrate the facilities quickly and then implement technologies that would make it easier to share data and information across the expanded system.

But with data from 4.5 million patients flowing into the system annually, finding reliable ways to protect that data and operationalize it for better care and health outcomes—as well as improved efficiency—became critical. For Piedmont, a modern but pragmatic solution came in the form of digital cloud fax. It’s a tool that positioned the health system to achieve economies of scale during a period of high growth.

How Piedmont Did It

Three years ago, Piedmont embarked on a journey to improve information sharing by replacing existing on premise fax machines with a digital cloud fax infrastructure. At the time, Piedmont—which encompasses 2,200 locations across Georgia—was strategically growing, with the merger of University Health Care System, including University Hospital in Augusta, taking place in 2022.

Health system IT leaders sought to move more than 4 million annual faxes to the cloud through a phased implementation. At the time, the health system’s use of paper-based fax had begun to demonstrate breakdowns in information transfer:

Piedmont often faced challenges with missing orders and gaps in patient information. And, during peak hours of the day, when fax volumes were heavy, team members couldn’t count on receiving the fax they were waiting for. Staff would spend hours on the phone, tracking down the orders or data needed.
When information was available via unstructured PDFs, clinicians and other team members would scan the PDFs and then index the information so it could be searched for and retrieved later.
Employees carried a heavy administrative burden associated with manually inputting patient information into the EHR.

Piedmont’s IT team knew the health system could no longer afford to manage data in this way—especially sensitive patient data. The health system looked for a way to operationalize this work without putting undue stress on clinical teams and support staff.

The move to cloud-based information exchange—made possible through digital cloud fax—gives Piedmont the ability to track the receipt of faxed documents and notify physicians, clinicians and others when the information arrives. It also enables these documents to be embedded into the electronic medical record (EMR).

Access to faxed documents within the EMR has been a game changer for Piedmont. It allows surgical teams to check to ensure all the legally required documents have been received before initiating a procedure, protecting start times in the operating room. It also empowers teams to search for and analyze the data from these documents and use the data to strengthen efficiency and productivity.

Putting a More Modern Spin on Traditional Tech

Today, 90% of Piedmont’s facilities have transitioned to digital cloud fax. The move toward automated routing and processing of inbound faxes and integrating fax with existing business applications positions Piedmont to provide better care with increased efficiency, giving clinicians faster access to the data they need in one place. It also offered the unexpected benefit of enhanced security. The system Piedmont chose is HITRUST-certified and meets necessary compliance requirements for healthcare, eliminating the burden on the health system’s IT team to ensure the infrastructure is secure.

Moreover, Piedmont’s digital cloud fax infrastructure offers the potential to apply advanced capabilities such as artificial intelligence to transform unstructured patient documents, such as PDFs and images, into structured data. This would enable clinicians to find the data directly within their workflows, accelerating access to information that could make an impact on patient care.

Piedmont IT leaders point to three lessons learned through this initiative:

Don’t be afraid to put a more modern twist on traditional tech. Upleveling Piedmont’s fax infrastructure to digital cloud fax improves clinicians’ ability to access the data they need, when they need it. It also empowers Piedmont to apply advanced capabilities like artificial intelligence to the faxes it receives—a game changer for healthcare information exchange.
Understand that a risk-averse approach to technology and software investment typically puts healthcare organizations at greater risk. By exploring practical tools for strengthening data sharing, for example, health systems can overcome breakdowns in information exchange with small and under-resourced facilities. This not only helps protect continuity in care, but also offers the potential to increase revenue by making it easier to send and receive referrals.
Explore use cases for cloud-based innovation with a focus on return on investment. At Piedmont, increased efficiency in information capture and exchange gives clinicians greater time for indirect education. It also opens the door to optimizing revenue by making it easier to receive and follow up on referrals.