HIPAA-Compliant Phone and Fax Services

Your practice needs patients to reach the front desk and outside organizations to send records. You may already have a working phone system, an established fax number and staff who depend on both.

Should you move everything to one provider, or keep voice and fax separate?

One provider can simplify purchasing and administration, but it does not automatically mean one number, one subscription or identical security requirements. A platform can include fax, sell it through an additional license, or require a distinct healthcare fax offering.

If your phone system already works well, keeping it and adding dedicated fax is a practical option. Compare staff access, document usage and existing numbers before deciding to move both services.

This guide examines those purchasing models, explains how RingRx, RingCentral, Dialpad and Nextiva handle fax, and shows where Fax.Plus fits as a separate document-exchange service.

Three ways to purchase phone and fax

An appropriately configured bundle or separate services can meet a practice’s requirements. If the existing phone plan already includes suitable faxing, establish its scope before adding a subscription.

What makes phone and fax services suitable for HIPAA workflows?

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) distinguishes a telecommunications provider acting only as a conduit from a vendor creating, receiving or maintaining protected health information (PHI) on a covered entity’s behalf. Storing recordings or transcripts can create business associate obligations beyond a transient call connection.

Assess the service rather than assuming every telephone call requires a Business Associate Agreement (BAA), or every product sold by a telecom company is exempt. HHS audio-only telehealth guidance.

For a phone-and-fax proposal, establish:

• Which services the applicable BAA covers.
• Whether recordings, voicemail, transcripts and fax documents are stored.
• Which features and delivery methods are permitted in the healthcare configuration.
• Which subscription, activation steps and staff procedures are required.

One agreement may cover several services, but its scope needs verification. A BAA covering one product should not be assumed to cover every connected application.

A phone number or handset is not independently “HIPAA certified.” The service arrangement, configuration and handling of information matter.

Phone and fax providers: what the plans include

Prices below are in US dollars. Compare the eligible phone-and-fax configuration rather than the lowest advertised voice price.

RingRx: fax included in qualifying healthcare phone plans

Grow costs $19 per user per month and includes web fax. Clinic costs $25 per user per month and supports web and machine fax. Lite costs $15 and does not include fax. The Lite starting price therefore does not represent a phone-and-fax package.

Prices exclude applicable taxes and fees, including additional messaging registration charges. Confirm commitment and billing terms in the proposal.

Grow and Clinic provide separate voice and fax numbers. A common vendor does not mean patients and referring offices use the same number for both tasks.

A standard BAA is available across the plans. Obtain the applicable agreement before handling PHI through the covered service.

Consider RingRx when replacing telephone service and needing browser faxing or, through Clinic, machine fax. Demonstrate incoming fax permissions, number configuration and any hardware required to keep a physical fax machine.

RingCentral: compare bundled communications with standalone fax

RingCentral offers fax within a communications plan and through a separate fax subscription.

Ask for the current phone subscription that includes the fax capabilities your staff need, including its user licensing and usage terms. A standalone fax subscription is a different purchase and its price does not represent a complete phone-and-fax package.

For healthcare use, establish the Business Associate Agreement (BAA) and covered configuration. Assess connected email systems and third-party applications separately rather than assuming the agreement covers the whole workflow.

For an organization already using RingCentral or replacing several communication tools, demonstrate who can manage faxes and which staff need the proposed subscription. Compare that complete proposal with your chosen voice service plus dedicated fax.

Dialpad: one supplier, with additional fax licenses and credits

Its documentation describes a separately purchased fax license. The licensed line includes up to 1,000 local outbound pages per month under the documented arrangement. This is not a combined incoming-and-outgoing allowance or an automatically pooled practice quota.

Obtain the actual license charge and destination rates in the proposal. Inbound faxing requires credits; without an available balance, the account cannot receive faxes.

Fax uses a separate number that cannot handle voice calls or SMS. Dialpad supports personal and shared-line fax workflows across desktop and mobile.

If a send fails because credits are unavailable, adding funds does not automatically resend it: staff must initiate the transmission again.

Dialpad supports HIPAA use with the applicable signed BAA and includes fax in its healthcare capabilities.

Existing Dialpad customers can evaluate fax through the same supplier. Demonstrate shared access, credit monitoring and how staff identify unsuccessful transmissions; the additional license alone does not resolve those operating tasks.

Nextiva: obtain the healthcare-specific fax configuration

Nextiva offers telephone services and online fax, but its fax page distinguishes general subscriptions from HIPAA-compliant vFAX, which requires a separate proposal.

Do not use the lowest general vFAX price as the cost of a HIPAA-eligible phone-and-fax deployment. Ask Nextiva to identify the voice product, fax offering and combined commercial terms.

The contractual restrictions deserve the same attention as the product list. The appropriate offering must be identified as HIPAA-compliant or HC on the quote, with a BAA.

For NextivaONE, the guidelines prohibit PHI in SMS/MMS and in Conversations/Rooms. Those collaboration features can include contacts receiving SMS instead of messages within the application.

Transcription, email delivery and recording also require confirmation within the purchased configuration. Request a demonstration rather than assuming those features are universally available or universally disabled.

Consider the healthcare-specific offering when evaluating Nextiva voice or adding fax to an existing deployment. Demonstrate covered delivery methods, staff access and the complete recurring cost.

When keeping phone and fax separate makes sense

Separate purchasing deserves consideration when:

• Your telephone system already handles routing, schedules and voicemail effectively.
• Fax access needs to follow different departmental responsibilities.
• Document traffic requires its own shared allowance and administration.
• Replacing voice would create implementation work without sufficient benefit.

There are responsibilities on both sides. Separate services mean maintaining two vendor relationships, access arrangements and support processes.

Separation is also not an automatic continuity guarantee. Both services can still depend on the same internet connection, devices, identity systems or local power.

Fax.Plus as the dedicated fax component

Four staff handling referrals and records can use individual Fax.Plus accounts while the practice keeps the telephone system that already handles its calls. Fax.Plus provides the fax component; it does not replace voice service or create a shared voice-and-fax inbox.

For PHI, the required Fax.Plus healthcare arrangement is Enterprise, enabled Advanced Security Controls and a signed BAA. Basic, Premium and Business do not provide alternative HIPAA-eligible configurations. Fax.Plus plan requirements.

Enterprise includes 4,000 shared billable pages, unlimited members and two numbers. Pricing starts at $79.99 per month equivalent annually, with a displayed annual charge of $959.99, or from $99.99 month-to-month.

Additional billable pages cost $0.03, and additional numbers cost $4.99 per month. Fax.Plus pricing.

This access model is relevant when several staff need individual fax accounts alongside existing phone licenses. Number assignments still affect consumption: an incoming page counts once for each user assigned to the receiving number. Fax.Plus number assignments.

Transmission duration and destination multipliers can also affect the billable count. Evaluate the allowance using the billing definition rather than assuming 4,000 physical sheets in every situation. Fax.Plus product terms.

Staff can manage documents through web and mobile applications, with individual access, roles and centralized controls. Transmission reports support follow-up on a send; they do not establish clinical review or filing.

Compare costs using the same requirements

For a practice with ten phone users and four staff handling fax, compare the actual incremental cost: which staff need fax permissions, which subscriptions must change and which numbers must move? Do not assume either ten upgraded seats or four licenses without checking the proposal.

Include annual commitment, post-promotion prices, required fees, additional usage and remaining obligations under the current contract. Compare complete configurations meeting the same requirements; a universal savings figure would omit those differences.

Number portability can determine the purchase

Inventory voice and fax numbers before selecting a provider.

For each voice and fax number, identify its current service and intended destination. Check fax number transfer eligibility and confirm voice-number portability separately. Confirm that the new platform supports the intended function and whether moving one part of a bundle changes the other services.

Port-out conditions matter at the beginning of a contract, too. Under Fax.Plus’s published terms, numbers purchased from Fax.Plus cannot be ported out. Numbers previously ported into the service can be transferred out.

1. Confirm eligibility and documentation. Obtain the receiving provider’s requirements before initiating changes.
2. Prepare the destination. Configure accounts, permissions, routing and required agreements.
3. Coordinate the transfer. Keep existing services active while the providers handle the process.
4. Verify operation before cancellation. Check incoming and outgoing functions, staff access and any remaining services.

A successful number transfer does not establish that historical recordings, voicemail and fax documents moved with it. Treat historical data as a separate migration requirement.

Administration and continuity need their own evaluation

Ask who can listen to voicemail, access recordings, open fax documents and change routing. A receptionist’s phone responsibilities may not require access to every clinical fax.

Use individual accounts and define departure procedures and retained organizational access. Confirm which identity-management capabilities the proposal includes. Test who handles a failed fax, insufficient usage credits or an unattended receiving queue.

Define who notices failures and which approved alternative applies. Working call reception does not establish that fax reception works; separate suppliers may still share internet, power or identity dependencies.

A fax service supplied by a VoIP company also differs from connecting an existing fax machine to a generic VoIP adapter. Where physical equipment must remain, confirm the supported hardware and configuration.

Choose the arrangement that fits your practice

A phone-and-fax bundle deserves consideration when you are replacing voice service and its fax capabilities meet the practice’s requirements.

A dedicated fax service deserves consideration when the existing telephone system works well or fax needs its own allowance, access model and administration.

Fax.Plus Enterprise supports the second approach with shared billable fax capacity and unlimited members, subject to its HIPAA requirements and usage rules. Preserve the phone workflow that works, and evaluate the fax component against the staff tasks and document volume it must handle.