Fax machine emerges as next public health threat in Haldimand-Norfolk

Move over, COVID-19. The biggest threat now facing the Haldimand-Norfolk Health Unit is the fax machine.

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According to the health unit’s annual risk assessment, the “lack of a reliable faxing system” posed as great a risk to operations over the past six months as low morale among staff caused by uncertainty about the organization’s future.

In a report presented to the board of health last week, the health unit said switching to a new fax system in May 2023 caused “a significant interruption to service” that severely hampered the organization’s workflow.

The new system “impacted the ability of programs to adequately meet the response requirements and appropriately service the community,” the report said.

Public health director Syed Shah told The Spectator the health unit switched providers so as to install a hybrid system that would automatically turn faxes into emails sent directly to the recipient’s inbox.

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“It didn’t work well,” Shah said.

Incoming faxes were waylaid, only came through partially, or made to the health unit’s server but not to the intended recipients, he explained.

Employees were left to chase down missing faxes by calling the senders and finding other secure ways to obtain the information.

That created more headaches for staff but did not impact service delivery for patients and residents, Shah said.

“We didn’t miss anything, but it added more workload to our staff,” he said.

The wonky fax system was classified as a red-alert threat because of the potential for important information to go astray, Shah explained.

“The risk is if you’re not getting the information, you’re going to miss your mandate of responding to diseases,” he said.

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The good news, Shah said, is things have changed for the better since the risk assessment report was written in March.

After six months of dealing with this issue on a weekly basis and searching for a solution, the county’s information technology department found a new service provider that can effectively and consistently merge fax and email systems.

“For the last few weeks, things have improved,” Shah said.

Coun. Chris Van Paassen called the situation puzzling.

“I find it rather unusual that one of the new, very high-risk things is a lack of ability to use a fax machine,” he said.

“I guess that is a very important system still within the medical community. I just don’t understand why.”

Shah told The Spectator the health unit would happily give up on faxes, but they remain the preferred method of communication from doctors’ offices, long-term care homes, medical labs and hospitals.

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“Our four major partners use fax. So we’re stuck,” Shah said.

Staff morale on the rise

Shah said the risk posed by deteriorating staff morale has also diminished in recent weeks, now that the Brant County and Haldimand-Norfolk health units have jointly submitted a merger proposal to the province, and the ministry has provided more information about changes coming to provincial health standards.

“There is more clarity (and) more communication across the board,” Shah said. “This has really helped staff.”

Shah said the health unit has taken great strides to fill vacant positions, address scheduling issues, and securely digitize personal health information, and those priority concerns from a year ago have fallen to medium-risk items.

Meanwhile, COVID-19 case numbers went from a code-red risk in January 2023 to the lowest concern among the 11 operational risks identified in the latest report.

JP Antonacci is a Local Journalism Initiative Reporter based at the Hamilton Spectator. The initiative is funded by the Government of Canada.

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