What does the Fax say!? - England's NHS forced to end fax usage

[rcmaehl]

Source:
BBC

 

Summary:

England's NHS has been banned from buying fax machines effective January, and usage by April 2020 in an effort to improve safety and security.

Media:

 

Quotes/Excerpts:

Quote

Nearly 9,000 fax machines were in use across the NHS in England. The Department of Health said a change to more modern communication methods was needed to improve patient safety and cyber security. In place of fax machines, the Department of Health said secure email should be used. The continued use of the outdated technology by the NHS was "absurd". It was "crucial" that the health service invested in "better ways of communicating the vast amount of patient information that is going to be generated" in the future. Three-quarters of the trusts in England replied to the survey - 95 in total. Ten trusts said that they did not own any fax machines, but four in ten reported more than 100 in use. "You would not believe the palaver we have in the work place trying to communicate important documents to services (referrals etc)," she said. "We constantly receive faxes meant for other places in error but this is never reported." "I hope this is just the start of many changes," he said. "The amount of time wasted and potential errors that exist from not using technology is shocking and often it's the patients that suffer." However, "what happens when a computer virus attacks a hospital's IT infrastructure, as happened recently?" "During the WannaCry attack of 2017 our 'out-dated, redundant' piece of equipment ensured that blood products, not routinely held in our on-site blood bank, could be ordered without delay and therefore not compromising patient safety."

 

My Thoughts:

If you haven't already sell your fax machine stocks! This will likely be the first of many nails in the coffin for a technology that should have long been dead. That being said the NHS was notably affected by Wannacry compared to the larger US healthcare system and as such they may need to re-evaluate their cyber security policies before phasing these devices out completely.

[Okjoek]

Atleast they have an affordable healthcare system.

[williamcll]

What will happen to all the current fax machines?

[Coaxialgamer]

2 hours ago, rcmaehl said:

If you haven't already sell your fax machine stocks!

Nah man ! It's reverse psychology man ! Buy ALL the fax stocks ! everyone be shorting them ! Best time to buy until they make a comeback. Who needs to be a bitcoin billionaire when you can be a fax billionaire.

 

this is sarcasm

[ARikozuM]

@leadeater, what's your take on this? Got anything to share? Do you think this will affect other sectors besides Brother and [other fax company]? 

[asus killer]

2 hours ago, Okjoek said:

Atleast they have an affordable healthcare system.

i'm not even from the UK, but seen a report about the US department of veteran affairs and they staked piles of paper on a room because who needs computers in 2018 , so is this what you mean by the pot calling the kettle black?

[corrado33]

What does the fax say?

 

urrrr EEEE urrr NNNGGGG CRRRRcrrrr KEEEEEEE grrr nnnnnng

[Monkey Dust]

Fax machines, for when you want to send someone a document but you only want them to be able to read half of it. I'm old enough to remember using the things, they are rubbish and waste huge amounts of paper. 

[Lady Fitzgerald]

FAX should have died out over a decade ago. They are less secure than ordinary emails (and even those can be made secure; FAX cannot).

[YaBoiWill]

4 hours ago, williamcll said:

What will happen to all the current fax machines?

Affordable, if you earn under 11K a year it's FREE. 

If you earn over 11K, then taxes come into play, at which point you then start paying for the queen, schools, Brexit and all the other crap the government likes to spend money on, like flying 6 ministers to Brussels on a private A330 instead of a commercial airline, because making sense isnt a priority 

[leadeater]

6 hours ago, ARikozuM said:

@leadeater, what's your take on this? Got anything to share? Do you think this will affect other sectors besides Brother and [other fax company]? 

What the fax are you talking about?

 

 

 

 

 

 

Anyway, Hospitals here still use Fax as well. Mostly as a backup/fallback to the main system going down, Fax is actually a reliable communication system just not very secure. Switching to secure IP Fax would be a decent start at something.

[mynameisjuan]

1 hour ago, leadeater said:

Fax is actually a reliable communication system

My SIP trunks and certain TDM gateways say otherwise lol

[leadeater]

Just now, mynameisjuan said:

My SIP trunks and certain TDM gateways say otherwise lol

Yea, I was meaning internal Fax .

[Master Disaster]

21 hours ago, Okjoek said:

Atleast they have an affordable healthcare system.

You don't live here. What's the point of free healthcare when you genuinely have to be dying before you can see a doctor?

 

For reference, 2 weeks ago I received a letter from my Doctor's telling me that my yearly asthma review was overdue and that if I didn't make an appointment by the end of December i would lose access to inhalers (standard practice here in England, repeat medication has to be reassessed at least once per year). I rang my doctor's with the letter in hand, after spending 40 minutes on hold (I'm really not exaggerating) I was told that appointments this time of year were reserved for emergencies and there was an 8 week delay before they could get me in. When I explained that the letter said I had to see someone before the end of December i was told I shouldn't have waited so long to call. When I explained i had received the letter that day I was told that's impossible. After hanging up and walking down to see them face to face with the letter they finally agreed to give me an emergency appointment but not until December 28th and only with a nurse not a doctor.

 

3 years ago I broke my arm, I had slipped over on some ice. After I woke up from being passed out I picked myself up, walked a mile with a broken arm to a friend's house and my friend took me to the hospital. I spent 5 hours sat in a waiting room, it was 4am before anybody saw me. When I mentioned this to the Nurse he told me I should have rang 999 and asked for an Ambulance as Ambulance patients are given priority so the Ambulance staff can get back out.

 

You might think these are extreme examples but honestly they aren't. Doctors now routinely refuse to see patients with colds (fair enough with that one), ear infections and chest infections (unless you're asthmatic) classing them as minor ailments instead. 6 hours waiting in A&E with a "minor ailment" is normal.

 

Most of the time you ring a doctor you're assessed by the receptionist on the phone and if it's not deemed serious then you're told to go see a pharmacist and buy over the counter drugs.

 

As I outlined above, you can't even get in when they send for you.

 

Free healthcare might seem great and I'm certainly not complaining (it's not the doctors/nurses fault the system is broken) but it's only as good as the system and right now the system is beyond broken.

[leadeater]

45 minutes ago, VegetableStu said:

wtf hospital, that's not how triage works ಠ_ಠ should someone viscerally stabbed right outside the hospital call the ambulance?!

Personally, I know of an incident here that happened in the hospital car park and they were not able/allowed/willing to come out and help and emergency services were called. No ambulances were available so one from the next town over had to come, drove in to the car park, picked the person up, drove out of the car park and in to the ambulance entrance.

 

Dumbest thing I was ever involved with, took bloody ages.

 

45 minutes ago, VegetableStu said:

wtf hospital, that's not how triage works ಠ_ಠ should someone viscerally stabbed right outside the hospital call the ambulance?!

That's how it works in most places, ambo always first, waiting room second. If you're in the waiting room there are a few key words that will get you seen immediately, I mean that, but I'm not sure if I should say what they are.

 

51 minutes ago, Master Disaster said:

Most of the time you ring a doctor you're assessed by the receptionist on the phone and if it's not deemed serious then you're told to go see a pharmacist and buy over the counter drugs.

Doesn't sound like a very good doctors practice/GP, though that can be hit and miss everywhere. Luckily I have a good one, appointments are mostly no questions asked other than how urgent you think it is, not them, and you don't have to say what the issue is. Plus mine knows I only ever call for actually important stuff and generally already know what the problem is and it's a short confirmation and advice/prescription as necessary.

 

All the GP's here are totally full though, it's near impossible to get one if you don't have one and are then force to use the city doctors/general services or worst case emergency services at a hospital which is frowned upon as it wastes resources but you have to do what you have to so yea... sometimes things suck for everyone involved.

 

Having a parent who works in hospital IT I get a rather good behind the scenes view of a lot of stuff. Sadly almost all the funding issues would near as much go away over night if people didn't get shit faced drunk as much as they do, get seriously injured or intoxicated enough to require a stomach pump, or average weight was reduced lowering obesity rates which has significant flow on health implications and large costs associated with them. People are literally drinking and eating their health services in to financial ruin.

[Master Disaster]

7 minutes ago, leadeater said:

Personally, I know of an incident here that happened in the hospital car park and they were not able/allowed/willing to come out and help and emergency services were called. No ambulances were available so one from the next town over had to come, drove in to the car park, picked the person up, drove out of the car park and in to the ambulance entrance.

 

Dumbest thing I was ever involved with, took bloody ages.

 

That's how it works in most places, ambo always first, waiting room second. If you're in the waiting room there are a few key words that will get you seen immediately, I mean that, but I'm not sure if I should say what they are.

 

Doesn't sound like a very good doctors practice/GP, though that can be hit and miss everywhere. Luckily I have a good one, appointments are mostly no questions asked other than how urgent you think it is, not them, and you don't have to say what the issue is. Plus mine knows I only ever call for actually important stuff and generally already know what the problem is and it's a short confirmation and advice/prescription as necessary.

 

All the GP's here are totally full though, it's near impossible to get one if you don't have one and are then force to use the city doctors/general services or worst case emergency services at a hospital which is frowned upon as it wastes resources but you have to do what you have to so yea... sometimes things suck for everyone involved.

 

Having a parent who works in hospital IT I get a rather good behind the scenes view of a lot of stuff. Sadly almost all the funding issues would near as much go away over night if people didn't get shit faced drunk as much as they do, get seriously injured or intoxicated enough to require a stomach pump, or average weight was reduced lowering obesity rates which has significant flow on health implications and large costs associated with them. People are literally drinking and eating their health services in to financial ruin.

Here in England there's a real problem with red tape. The government has created that many hoops to jump through, so much paperwork, so many management tiers and it all has to be paid for. Meanwhile your average emergency doctor doing 12 hour shifts might spend half his day actually seeing patients (if he's lucky), nurses are now doing jobs the doctors should be doing because the doctors don't have the time and around 40% of all funds allocated to any given NHS Trust is immediately swallowed up by paying managers to sit in offices all day doing even more paperwork.

 

By far the biggest drain is health tourism though, people from across Europe know the NHS cannot refuse anybody treatment so they travel to England (sometimes even illegally) and present themselves to English hospitals to get treated for free. A few years back the NHS tried to stop this from happening by seeking to charge anybody without a UK passport for treatment before its given and the ECJ ruled it illegal.

[leadeater]

2 minutes ago, VegetableStu said:

... so the movies weren't kidding then ._.

Yep pretty much, years and years ago I saw someone waiting with a huge cut across his hand, huge, but it wasn't bleeding heavily anymore with the bandage/towel around it so he had to wait for which I'm going to assume was a fair decent amount of time and was just given pain killers in the mean time (weak ones because not assessed properly yet).

 

Having a large cut or knife/object stabbed in to you isn't necessary always as bad as you'd think it is, not that I would give a damn if it were me in the situation.

[leadeater]

15 minutes ago, Master Disaster said:

Here in England there's a real problem with red tape. The government has created that many hoops to jump through, so much paperwork, so many management tiers and it all has to be paid for. Meanwhile your average emergency doctor doing 12 hour shifts might spend half his day actually seeing patients (if he's lucky), nurses are now doing jobs the doctors should be doing because the doctors don't have the time and around 40% of all funds allocated to any given NHS Trust is immediately swallowed up by paying managers to sit in offices all day doing even more paperwork.

Very much the same here, that's one of the reasons why the drinking issue is such a big drain on the system financially and time wise because of all the reporting required for everything that goes on and the sheer amount of people that end up in emergency rooms because of excessive drinking which means you not only have to treat them but fill in all the required paper work, which then later gets analyzed and reported back to the Ministry of Health who then do yet more aggregating and reporting on the data supplied by hospitals and health clinics etc.

 

Nothing happens in a hospital without some kind of super expensive system tracking it, not even washing the sheets is actually that simple because.... we just have to make it more complicated than it needs to be, or that's what I'd mostly like to say but I know it really isn't.

[CarlBar]

23 hours ago, rcmaehl said:

Source:
BBC

 

Summary:

England's NHS has been banned from buying fax machines effective January, and usage by April 2020 in an effort to improve safety and security.

Media:

 

Quotes/Excerpts:

 

My Thoughts:

If you haven't already sell your fax machine stocks! This will likely be the first of many nails in the coffin for a technology that should have long been dead. That being said the NHS was notably affected by Wannacry compared to the larger US healthcare system and as such they may need to re-evaluate their cyber security policies before phasing these devices out completely.

 

Almost certainly down to the NHS's chronic underfunding. replacing those fax machines is more expensive than continuing use and the NHS needs to pinch every penny it can get.

 

1 hour ago, leadeater said:

Personally, I know of an incident here that happened in the hospital car park and they were not able/allowed/willing to come out and help and emergency services were called. No ambulances were available so one from the next town over had to come, drove in to the car park, picked the person up, drove out of the car park and in to the ambulance entrance.

 

Dumbest thing I was ever involved with, took bloody ages.

 

That's how it works in most places, ambo always first, waiting room second. If you're in the waiting room there are a few key words that will get you seen immediately, I mean that, but I'm not sure if I should say what they are.

 

Doesn't sound like a very good doctors practice/GP, though that can be hit and miss everywhere. Luckily I have a good one, appointments are mostly no questions asked other than how urgent you think it is, not them, and you don't have to say what the issue is. Plus mine knows I only ever call for actually important stuff and generally already know what the problem is and it's a short confirmation and advice/prescription as necessary.

 

All the GP's here are totally full though, it's near impossible to get one if you don't have one and are then force to use the city doctors/general services or worst case emergency services at a hospital which is frowned upon as it wastes resources but you have to do what you have to so yea... sometimes things suck for everyone involved.

 

Having a parent who works in hospital IT I get a rather good behind the scenes view of a lot of stuff. Sadly almost all the funding issues would near as much go away over night if people didn't get shit faced drunk as much as they do, get seriously injured or intoxicated enough to require a stomach pump, or average weight was reduced lowering obesity rates which has significant flow on health implications and large costs associated with them. People are literally drinking and eating their health services in to financial ruin.

 

Here n the UK the core issue is just that the NHS is underfunded. Whilst where quite far up the global per capita spending charts. When you limit it to just first world nations (as that heavily effects the cost of delivering specific services), where quite far down the lists, (New Zealand is one of the handful below us). Given it's reputation the NHS still does an utterly amazing job with the funding it gets, but it really needs more.

 

he paperwork issue is largely down the the fact that the whole record keeping system is a result of decades of steady layering which can lead to many things having to be filled in multiple times on multiple different forms. There's a real problematic dearth of unification of paperwork. But thats a problem most government, and even some private institutions have in the Uk and i imagine elsewhere.

[Okjoek]

2 hours ago, Master Disaster said:

You don't live here. What's the point of free healthcare when you genuinely have to be dying before you can see a doctor?

 

For reference, 2 weeks ago I received a letter from my Doctor's telling me that my yearly asthma review was overdue and that if I didn't make an appointment by the end of December i would lose access to inhalers (standard practice here in England, repeat medication has to be reassessed at least once per year). I rang my doctor's with the letter in hand, after spending 40 minutes on hold (I'm really not exaggerating) I was told that appointments this time of year were reserved for emergencies and there was an 8 week delay before they could get me in. When I explained that the letter said I had to see someone before the end of December i was told I shouldn't have waited so long to call. When I explained i had received the letter that day I was told that's impossible. After hanging up and walking down to see them face to face with the letter they finally agreed to give me an emergency appointment but not until December 28th and only with a nurse not a doctor.

 

3 years ago I broke my arm, I had slipped over on some ice. After I woke up from being passed out I picked myself up, walked a mile with a broken arm to a friend's house and my friend took me to the hospital. I spent 5 hours sat in a waiting room, it was 4am before anybody saw me. When I mentioned this to the Nurse he told me I should have rang 999 and asked for an Ambulance as Ambulance patients are given priority so the Ambulance staff can get back out.

 

You might think these are extreme examples but honestly they aren't. Doctors now routinely refuse to see patients with colds (fair enough with that one), ear infections and chest infections (unless you're asthmatic) classing them as minor ailments instead. 6 hours waiting in A&E with a "minor ailment" is normal.

 

Most of the time you ring a doctor you're assessed by the receptionist on the phone and if it's not deemed serious then you're told to go see a pharmacist and buy over the counter drugs.

 

As I outlined above, you can't even get in when they send for you.

 

Free healthcare might seem great and I'm certainly not complaining (it's not the doctors/nurses fault the system is broken) but it's only as good as the system and right now the system is beyond broken.

I just don't want needing to go to the doctor to make me go bankrupt/ homeless.

[leadeater]

5 hours ago, CarlBar said:

Here n the UK the core issue is just that the NHS is underfunded.

It doesn't help that ~30% of emergency room admissions are alcohol related and tend to be on 3 nights of the week, those peaks end up being very demanding on the people that work those shifts. While costly it's more of a time resource demand, obesity is the bigger overall cost and pretty much every medical expert has warned that if not addressed and the trend continues costs will sore and it simply will not be a viable health system anymore.

[CarlBar]

31 minutes ago, leadeater said:

It doesn't help that ~30% of emergency room admissions are alcohol related and tend to be on 3 nights of the week, those peaks end up being very demanding on the people that work those shifts. While costly it's more of a time resource demand, obesity is the bigger overall cost and pretty much every medical expert has warned that if not addressed and the trend continues cost will sore.

 

Largely irrelevant. Don't get me wrong i don't doubt it's a significant factor in healthcare costs. But even without that healthcare will and should be easily the single biggest expense a government with the UK's type of on citizen expenses because it has to be administered over the entire lifetime of the individual, (unlike literally every other on citizen expense), And whilst healthcare is fairly big relative to the rest, it's nowhere near as big as you'd expect given that fact.

 

Chart i dug up quickly for reference: 

 

 

Get the spending upto a more reasonable level and the alcohol and obesity factors would not be such a big drain.

[Jito463]

Given all the stories in this thread, I have to shake my head at those who wonder why we in America are so opposed to government run health care.

 

As for the topic at hand, I would like to say that I'm surprised they're still using fax machines, but I'm really not.  Especially given what I already knew about the state of the health care systems in places such as the UK and Canada, based largely on lack of funding for said systems.  And while I didn't realize it extended to NZ, as well, I suppose that doesn't really surprise me too much, either.

[leadeater]

3 hours ago, CarlBar said:

Largely irrelevant. Don't get me wrong i don't doubt it's a significant factor in healthcare costs

It's not irrelevant, how and where the money that is allocated is spent is important. Simply increasing the funding doesn't address the problems, it just increases spending. While more funding I would also say is a good thing that alone is not the only thing that can be done or should be done.

 

3 hours ago, CarlBar said:

Get the spending upto a more reasonable level and the alcohol and obesity factors would not be such a big drain.

These issues need addressing regardless.

[leadeater]

1 hour ago, Jito463 said:

And while I didn't realize it extended to NZ, as well, I suppose that doesn't really surprise me too much, either.

Mine are more around stupid policies, like the car park thing. More money won't fix that.

 

Here we still have private health care though, we have dual public and private, as for GPs we just don't have enough of them or enough people entering the medical field. I've always had private health insurance, it's something you should always get and early as possible and get one that is leveled premium so the cost does not go up with age.