Despite the shift to EMRs and EHRs, fax remains a critical channel for hospitals, payers, and less-connected providers. Many external partners still rely on fax for referrals, orders, and documentation.
RightFax–EHR integration modernizes these fax-dependent workflows without disrupting clinical routines. Fax moves directly into and out of the EHR, reducing manual handling while keeping users inside the systems they already rely on.
Fax persists because it’s often the only secure channel that every party can receive without burdensome setup or coordination. Healthcare organizations operate along a wide spectrum of technical maturity, with specialists, rural clinics, long-term care providers, and certain payers and government agencies lagging in terms of connectivity and tooling.
At the same time, poorly managed faxing creates real risk. Standalone fax machines offer little access control and limited auditability, in stark contrast to the regulatory expectation of end-to-end logging.
Operationally, paper-based faxing tends to slow care delivery as staff scan, upload, and often chase down paper files. Delays, in turn, impede clinical decisions and extend the revenue cycle.
RightFax (now OpenText Fax) is an enterprise fax server that centralizes fax transmission, access control, and audit logging. Its EHR integrations embed fax directly into clinical workflows.
Users send and receive faxes from within the EHR. Outbound documents originate from charts or order workflows. Inbound faxes are captured centrally and routed to the correct chart, queue, or in-basket using identifiers, rules, or document metadata. Administrators manage numbers, routing, delivery status, and reporting from a single control layer.
In effect, RightFax integration turns fax from a side channel into a governed EHR capability.
RightFax supports common fax-based transactions while keeping clinicians and staff inside the EHR.
Clinicians send referral packets, notes, orders, and authorization materials directly from the chart. Typical benefits include:
Inbound consults, test results, outside records, and payer correspondence are captured and routed automatically. Identifiers, barcodes, or OCR logic place documents in the correct chart or work queue, eliminating rescanning and reducing misfiles.
Many payers still require fax. Integrated fax shortens send-receive cycles and reduces duplicate submissions. Revenue cycle teams gain clearer tracking and defensible audit trails for payer interactions.
Integrated RightFax environments enforce role-based access, secure transmission paths, and complete audit logging. This closes common gaps found in standalone fax machines or lightly governed cloud fax tools.
Fax supports time-sensitive clinical communication. High-availability designs include redundant fax services, resilient SIP connectivity, and defined failover behavior. Automatic retries and delivery confirmation reduce missed transmissions.
Modern fax deployments increasingly rely on SIP or cloud telephony. In hybrid or cloud architectures, routing rules and security boundaries between the EHR and fax environment must be clearly defined.
Many organizations address this by moving fax infrastructure and telephony into a managed model such as Private Fax Cloud® while preserving existing EHR integrations.
Integration removes printing, scanning, and physical document handling. Referrals, orders, and authorizations move faster with less variation across departments.
Consistent identifiers and routing rules improve chart accuracy. Administrators gain visibility into permissions, archives, and routing behavior across the organization.
Users work entirely inside the EHR without switching tools or guessing about fax status. Delivery indicators reduce follow-up calls and administrative friction.
Successful integrations depend on clear scope and disciplined execution.
Inventory fax devices, numbers, user groups, and document types. Identify high-volume workflows and areas with compliance or turnaround risk.
Start with use cases that deliver immediate value, such as referrals, prior authorizations, and inbound external results. Set measurable goals like fewer manual scans or shorter processing times.
Select the integration model that fits your environment. Define routing rules, naming standards, testing procedures, and ownership for ongoing support.
Provide role-specific training and roll out in phases. Monitor fax volumes, delivery performance, and turnaround times, then refine workflows based on actual usage.
Fax remains embedded in healthcare operations. The objective is not to eliminate it, but to manage it as a secure, efficient, EHR-centered service. RightFax integration tightens compliance, reduces manual work, and keeps clinical focus where it belongs.
If you want to evaluate how RightFax can integrate with your EHR environment, we’re here to help assess your current workflows, validate integration options, and design a pragmatic deployment roadmap. To learn more or speak to a senior consultant, please reach out today.