HIPAA-Compliant Fax for Maryland Healthcare Providers
Maryland providers fax all day: specialist referrals, lab orders, prescription authorizations, and prior auth requests that pharmacies and payers still take by fax. Practices regulated by the Maryland Department of Health and physicians licensed through the MD Board of Medical Examiners need every transmission to keep protected health information secure.
Regulations & Compliance
Maryland providers carry federal HIPAA duties plus the state's health privacy laws overseen by the Maryland Department of Health, and the MD Board of Medical Examiners sets clinical recordkeeping standards on top. PHI sent by fax has to be encrypted and access-controlled, and a covered entity needs a Business Associate Agreement with any vendor handling that data. The $79.99/mo Business plan is the tier for HIPAA work, with a BAA available.
Key Institutions
- • Maryland Department of Health
- • Maryland Medical Association
- • Maryland Hospital Association
- • MD Board of Medical Examiners
Healthcare Fax in Maryland — FAQ
Yes, on the right plan. Send FAX Mail encrypts transmissions with TLS, stores them with AES-256, and signs a Business Associate Agreement, which together meet what the Maryland Department of Health and the MD Board of Medical Examiners require. The HIPAA-ready Business plan runs $79.99 a month.
Referrals, lab orders, prescription and prior authorization requests, and signed consent forms account for most of it. The Maryland Medical Association and the Maryland Hospital Association operate alongside labs and payers that still default to fax, so a documented delivery trail counts on each one.
Any transmission of protected health information needs the BAA, which comes with the $79.99/mo Business plan. The plans starting at $12.99 work for non-PHI faxing, but for patient records a Maryland practice should be on the Business tier.
On the HIPAA-ready Business plan, an incoming fax with protected health information is never pushed out as an email attachment. A Maryland practice gets a notification and opens the PDF inside the authenticated dashboard, so referrals and lab results from partner offices stay out of open inboxes while still being easy to act on.
Why this matters
The HIPAA Security Rule requires technical safeguards to protect electronic protected health information when it is transmitted over a network.
Source: U.S. HHS — 45 CFR § 164.312(e)(1)HIPAA requires covered entities to obtain satisfactory assurances — typically a Business Associate Agreement — from vendors that handle protected health information on their behalf.
Source: U.S. HHS — 45 CFR § 164.308(b)As of 2021, most U.S. non-federal acute care hospitals still used mail or fax to exchange summary-of-care records with outside organizations — 69% to send and 78% to receive.
Source: ONC Data Brief No. 64 (Jan 2023), AHA Annual Survey IT SupplementStart faxing for healthcare in Maryland
Start your 7-day free trial. No credit card required.
7-day free trial · No credit card required