LetterAgent
Mail physical letters by just asking your AI assistant.
Home > Guides > HIPAA release forms
Yes. HIPAA does not ban faxing: the law requires reasonable safeguards for protected health information, and a fax with a cover sheet sent to a verified number meets that standard in most situations. Patients fax signed release forms to clinics and hospitals all the time to authorize sharing records with a new doctor or a family member.
The common misconception is that HIPAA lists approved technologies. It does not. HIPAA requires covered entities and their patients to apply reasonable safeguards when protected health information moves, and it treats a fax as an authorized transmission method, much like the postal mail. A release form you signed and faxed to the clinic's published fax number, with a cover sheet identifying the recipient, is the normal way this gets done.
What the clinic looks for is simpler than people expect: that the form is the clinic's own release (or contains the required elements), that it identifies exactly which records you are releasing and to whom, that it carries your signature and date, and that it has not expired. The delivery method is secondary. A faxed signature on a release form works the same way a faxed signature works on most medical paperwork.
They are practical habits, not a certification:
| Safeguard | How to do it |
|---|---|
| Cover sheet | First page names the recipient office and includes a confidentiality notice |
| Verified number | Use the number from the clinic's website or paperwork, never a guessed one |
| Call ahead for large faxes | Warn the office so staff collect the pages promptly |
| Confirm receipt | Keep the confirmation page and call to check it landed in the right file |
The one that matters most is the number. Faxing a release to a wrong number is not just an oops: for a clinic, sending protected health information to the wrong recipient can be a breach with reporting obligations. Double-check the digits against the clinic's own materials, and if the number came from a third-party directory, verify it by phone before sending anything with health details.
For a one-off release form, fax has a real structural advantage: it is a point-to-point transmission. The pages travel from your machine to the recipient's machine over the phone line, and the only copies that exist are the ones that print out at each end. Email, by contrast, typically stores copies on multiple servers along the way and in both parties' inboxes, where it can be forwarded, searched, and breached long after you sent it.
That is part of why doctors' offices still publish fax numbers for records requests while often refusing to accept health information by regular email. The security story of fax is not that the phone line is uncrackable; it is that there are fewer places for the data to rest. For patients, the practical takeaway is that faxing a release form to a verified clinic number is the conservative, widely accepted choice.
Two things trip people up. First, HIPAA's "minimum necessary" principle applies: the release should name the specific records or date range being shared, not just authorize "everything." A form that says "all records from 2023 to present to Dr. Smith at Riverside Clinic" is stronger than a blanket release, and some offices will ask you to narrow an overbroad one.
Second, releases expire. Most forms include an expiration date or a default time limit, and a faxed form that expired last year does you no good. If you are faxing an old signed release you found in a drawer, check the date first. Signing a fresh one takes two minutes and avoids the rejection.
LetterAgent's fax service works for US and Canadian fax numbers with no inbound fax. The flow is: you get a per-fax quote with the page count verified, you approve the exact total, you pay once through Stripe, and the fax is sent. Fax is currently in testing, so it is described as available in testing rather than guaranteed. Use the clinic's own release form and double-check the fax number before sending.
Ready to fax it? Fax with LetterAgent: describe it to your AI assistant, approve the exact quoted price, and it is sent.
LetterAgent is a working name. Prices include print, postage, and our service fee. US prices in USD, Canadian prices in CAD (Canadian prices exclude applicable sales tax, added at checkout). Currently in private testing.
Need help? Ask your assistant: it can check a job's status any time. If it ever can't handle something: hello@getletteragent.com