University of Radiology
How one of New Jersey’s Largest Private Radiology Practices Improved Workflows and Cut Costs with the RingClone Fax Integration for RingCentral
Because the RingCentral-RingClone solution gives us redundancy, our fax uptime is now close to 100%. That has had a positive effect on the service we provide our physician partners, their patients, and University Radiology’s bottom line.
Hank Loch
Telecommunications and Network Systems Engineer
The fifth largest private radiology practice in the United States
As one of the largest providers of subspecialty radiology and teleradiology services in New Jersey, University Radiology reviews and interprets nearly 2 million patient scans each year.
With a staff that includes 150 Board Certified MDs—representing a wide range of radiology subspecialties—University Radiology provides diagnostic care both at its own 23 medical imaging centers as well as within 9 major hospitals across New Jersey. These major hospitals, in fact, have entrusted University Radiology to serve as their onsite diagnostic imaging departments.
As University Radiology grew, its staff became increasingly effective at managing the tremendous volume of requests for medical imaging from referring physicians, hospitals, and other healthcare clients. But until recently, the organization faced one major operational challenge: processing the thousands of medical paperwork coming in each day by fax.
To solve that challenge, University Radiology turned to RingClone’s digital fax integration for RingCentral.
INDUSTRY
Medical practice
HQ
East Brunswick, NJ
YEAR FOUNDED
1964
EMPLOYEES
1000
Turning fax from a data-transmission liability into an asset
Because so many healthcare providers still prefer to send electronic protected health information (ePHI) by fax, University Radiology had built out a large infrastructure of onsite fax machines and analog phone lines to manage the 2,000 faxes of medical paperwork the organization receives every day.
But from many perspectives—including system redundancy, workflow efficiency, and regulatory compliance—this legacy fax infrastructure undermined operations. As one example, Hank Loch, University Radiology’s Telecommunications and Network Systems Engineer, describes the inefficiency of manually processing inbound faxes. “We were tying up a lot of staff time with people checking fax machines waiting for a request to come in, and then having to direct those faxes to the right team.”
When they implemented the RingCentral-RingClone integration, University Radiology addressed every one of these issues. And as Hank explains, the company transformed its faxing workflows from a challenge into one of the team’s operational strengths.
“With RingCentral and RingClone working together, we’re able to securely pull faxes into our environment, and use RingClone to map each fax to the correct folder on our server using extension attributes.”
Customizing a solution for University Radiology’s needs
Another advantage of deploying the RingClone fax integration for RingCentral, Hank points out, has been RingClone’s help in customizing its solution for University Radiology’s workflows.
It is very important to us that the faxes hit the correct folders so that our staff can efficiently handle and process these many pieces of medical paperwork as soon as possible. RingClone listened to our request, added computing power to their app, and reduced the time considerably from fax transmission to digital alert.”
RingClone even built a customized system-health graph for us, so we can see in real-time that everything is running smoothly with our digital fax environment. And if some area of the system has a problem, we’ll see it right away. That’s the type of technology partner you hope for but rarely get.
Jim Roschbach
Systems Engineer
Building a fax environment that meets HIPAA standards
Yet another advantage of migrating to the RingCentral-RingClone digital fax solution, explains Hank, was that it added strength to University Radiology’s regulatory position. With traditional hardcopy faxes, HIPAA compliance can be difficult for several reasons—exposed paper faxes, lack of a secure filing or shredding process, etc.
“Now that we have this RingCentral-RingClone solution, every aspect of our faxing process is secure, both during the fax transmission and after RingClone has archived it onto our secure servers. RingClone and RingCentral have also built their processes specifically to comply with HIPAA, and both companies signed Business Associate Agreements with University Radiology to share compliance responsibility with us.”
From both a data security and HIPAA-compliance standpoint, this RingClone fax integration for RingCentral really has us covered from all angles.
Hank Loch
Telecommunications and Network Systems Engineer