Since the start of COVID-19, eFax on local analog phone lines has been leveraged more. As a result, faxes may fail from time to time. eFax delivery success rates are much better that the 80% success rates offered by a typical fax machine. For example, sending and receiving 100 pages per day could result in up to 5 pages needing attention. Remember, faxes are telephone calls that can drop or be affected by networks involved.
💡 Tip: Always check your fax volume when analyzing success rates for eFax.
📌 Note: Contact your eFax vendor for ongoing support as needed.
The following offers some more info around eFax and what to expect.
Sending and receiving:
eFax service support up to 98-99% success rate; however, up to 5% of faxes may need to be resent.
Like any phone call, your fax calls can drop and affect incoming fax. This is due to using a local analog fax lines.
Electronic faxing or eFax relies on many things to be successful, such as:
Your internet network
Recipient network
Internet provider
Analog phone lines, if using a local fax number, and
The systems such as CHR or our servers
Also consider that using a VOIP system with a local fax line can also affect incoming faxes. To reduce issues, ensure your VOIP system administrative settings include the fax line as dedicated to eFax.
At times, your faxes can be queued at times and may take some time before being delivered successfully. For example:
An 80-page patient referral fax may take up to 40 minutes to be delivered successfully. This then causes delays for other out going faxes from your clinic.
Faxes shown as "pending" in your queue are eventually sent. Attempting to resend queued faxes causes further delays in fax transmissions.
If your faxes are not being sent within a reasonable time, contact your eFax vendor for support.
Partial faxes
If your incoming faxes are interrupted, e.g. due to a dropped call, you'll receive a partial fax.
Partial faxes are also valuable as they alert you to a dropped call and serve as a reminder to follow-up with the sender should you not receive the full fax.
Support for faxing issues
Contact your eFax provider as soon as you notice a trend occurring with your faxes. Include the following details:
Both fax numbers involved: yours and the facility you are sending to or trying to receive from
date and time of the faxes so they can be traced
If the content of the fax is a risk or privacy issue, inform of urgency for awareness
💡 Tip: If you report the issue within 24 hours, it is possible to trace the calls and determine why they were dropped. However, a trace may not be possible if you report the issue after 24 hours have passed.
Troubleshooting faxing issues may require your partnership working with your IT support, your internet provider and more due to all the networks involved.
If you continue to experience eFax issues on a local analog phone line, your vendor can add a toll-free fax line to your account for a small fee. These toll-free numbers don't use analog line and in most cases are added the same day you request.
Once a toll-free number is added to your account, it also needs to be configured within your CHR. You must contact the TELUS CHR support team.
💡 Tip: Toll-free lines are easier to troubleshoot for identifying issues and offer a great alternative or backup to analog lines.
Updated February 20, 2022