HIPAA requires covered entities to keep their compliance documentation, such as policies, risk assessments, and signed BAAs, for six years from the date it was created or last in effect. HIPAA does not set a retention period for medical records themselves; that comes from state law, which commonly ranges from 5 to 10 years for adults and longer for minors. iFax helps you meet both by storing every fax and its activity log securely in the cloud.
A faxed document that becomes part of a patient’s chart follows your state’s medical record retention rules. Fax logs and audit trails support the HIPAA Security Rule, which requires audit controls that record activity in systems holding PHI. In practice, healthcare organizations should keep:
- The faxed documents: for as long as your state requires for that record type.
- Transmission records: sender, recipient, date, time, page count, and delivery status for each fax.
- Access logs: who viewed, downloaded, or forwarded each fax.
- BAAs and policies: your signed BAA with your fax provider and your faxing policies, for at least six years.
Paper fax machines make this hard: thermal printouts fade, logs fill up, and nobody tracks who picked up a page. iFax solves it with:
- Encrypted cloud storage for every sent and received fax, protected with 256-bit AES encryption.
- Audit trails and fax reports that track every fax with timestamps, user activity, and document history.
- Searchable archives with AI-powered OCR, so you can find a record fast during an audit or records request.
- Automatic backup to Google Drive, OneDrive, Dropbox, Box, or SFTP to match your own retention system.
- Role-based access so only authorized staff can open or delete faxes.
Check your state’s medical board or health department for exact retention periods, and talk to your compliance officer before setting a deletion schedule. For more on secure faxing rules, see our HIPAA faxing FAQs. iFax is HIPAA, SOC 2, and ISO 27001 compliant. Start your 7-day free trial, or get a demo to see iFax audit trails in action.
