Choosing a fax service for a Canadian clinic

Start with privacy law

The rules for personal health information depend on your province. Ontario clinics are health information custodians under PHIPA. Other provinces have their own health privacy laws, such as Alberta's Health Information Act, and PIPEDA can apply to some private-sector organisations. Whatever applies to you, the core expectation is the same: take reasonable steps to protect health information from unauthorised access, use or disclosure.

Ask any provider which laws its safeguards are built for. FaxToFax is built with safeguards for PHIPA and PIPEDA, among others. If you practise outside Ontario, check your provincial legislation and your regulatory college's guidance, and confirm the service supports what they require.

How FaxToFax answers them

Documents are encrypted in transit with TLS 1.2 or higher and at rest. Incoming faxes go to a private encrypted browser inbox and are never emailed, which keeps health information out of staff mailboxes. Team roles are owner, admin, member and viewer, so a receptionist can send and receive while a locum might only view. The Business plan adds a shared inbox so the whole front desk sees incoming referrals in one place.

Every view, download and send is recorded in an append-only audit log that you can export as CSV, which is useful for privacy audits. Retention controls let you purge faxes automatically after a set period, in line with your records policy once the fax has been saved to your EMR. Before every fax, each recipient number must be confirmed, and staff are signed out after a period of inactivity: the owner can choose 15, 30 or 60 minutes.

One honest limitation: porting your existing clinic fax number isn't available yet. You'd choose a new local or toll-free Canadian number and let referral partners know.