Referrals, outside records, and prior authorizations still move by fax in most Epic environments. OpenText Fax (formerly RightFax) integrates with Epic across Hyperspace, Print Server, Radiant, Beaker, Order Entry, OnBase, and Community Connect/CareConnect deployments, giving inbound and outbound fax the same tracking and audit trail as every other document in the chart.
This page covers what that integration solves, the workflows it supports, and how Private Fax Cloud® streamlines implementation and management.
Out of the box, Epic can generate a fax the same way it generates a print job: through Epic Print Server or a configured device. That covers the basic case of getting a document out the door, but it leaves several problems unaddressed once volume, compliance, and multi-department routing enter the picture. RightFax closes those gaps and allows integration with all other back-office software.
Staff should not need to leave a chart, order, or administrative screen to send a fax. A proper integration lets users fax directly from Hyperspace, order entry, or a document workflow, with the same interface they already use for everything else in Epic.
Every document that gets printed, faxed on a separate device, and then scanned back into the chart introduces a chance for the wrong page to end up in the wrong record. Routing fax traffic through Epic and RightFax directly removes that detour for both outbound and inbound documents.
A fax sent from a departmental machine leaves no record beyond a confirmation slip, if that. RightFax logs every transmission—sender, recipient, timestamp, and delivery status—in a format that supports compliance review rather than requiring staff to reconstruct it after the fact.
Inbound fax volume through Epic environments typically spans referrals, lab results, outside records, and prior authorization responses. Each of these belongs in a different queue or department. Without routing rules, that traffic lands in one shared inbox and someone has to sort it by hand. RightFax automates routing and works natively with AI and OCR automation to apply nuanced business rules.
RightFax connects to Epic at several points, and each one serves a distinct clinical or administrative function. Below are the workflows most healthcare organizations rely on.
Outbound fax may be more visible to more users, but inbound fax is where volume, risk, and manual labor tend to pile up.
Incoming referrals need to reach the correct department, provider, or scheduling queue without a staff member manually reading each cover sheet. Routing rules built around sender, recipient line, or document content handle this automatically.
Records requested from another provider or facility arrive by fax more often than any other method in most markets. RightFax routes these into the appropriate patient record or review queue, rather than piling up in a general inbox.
Reference lab results that don't arrive through an HL7 interface still show up by fax in many organizations. Automated routing gets them to Beaker or the ordering provider without a manual lookup step.
Payer responses to prior authorization requests arrive on their own timeline and format, and missing one can cause high-impact delays. Routing these directly to the requesting department or case manager reduces the chance of leaving a response unopened.
Matching an inbound fax to the correct patient record is the step most organizations still do by hand. Automated indexing, using patient name, date of birth, MRN, or other identifying data present on the document, attaches the fax to the right chart without a staff member opening it first.
No automated matching system gets every document right. When a fax can't be matched with confidence, it should land in a review queue for a human to confirm, rather than either auto-filing to the wrong chart or disappearing into a general folder.
Outbound fax integration matters just as much as inbound, particularly for organizations that measure staff time spent on manual document handling.
Failed faxes are routine in any fax environment, but Epic organizations face a particular version of the problem: Epic sends a single generic user ID with every fax transmission, which makes it difficult to trace a failure back to the specific chart, order, or department that generated it.
Most failures trace back to a small set of causes: a busy signal on the receiving end, a line or telephony configuration issue, a receiving fax machine that's offline, or a negotiation error between sending and receiving devices during connection setup. Some resolve on retry; others need investigation at the telecom layer.
Without visibility into failed transmissions, a failed referral fax or lab request can sit unnoticed until someone asks why a response never arrived. In some workflows, that delay affects patient care directly, not just administrative timelines.
RightFax monitors every transmission, retries automatically on transient failures, and escalates to a designated staff member when a fax can't be delivered after repeated attempts. The specific retry count and escalation path are configurable per document type or department, since a prior authorization response and a routine referral don't carry the same urgency.
Beyond individual failure handling, organizations need aggregate visibility: which departments generate the most failures, which failure types recur, and whether response times to failed faxes meet internal targets. RightFax reporting supports this review without requiring a manual pull from individual fax logs.
Most of the workflows above depend on correctly configured fax server infrastructure sitting behind Epic, and that infrastructure is where a lot of Epic-RightFax deployments run into trouble.
Private Fax Cloud is our managed answer to that problem: a RightFax deployment—preconfigured with best practices for routing, retries, and audit-readiness—running on private cloud infrastructure that we operate and support.
Instead of your IT team standing up and maintaining a RightFax server, Private Fax Cloud® hosts it on infrastructure we manage, configured according to practices developed across many years of Epic-specific deployments.
Our engineers monitor the environment and handle the maintenance work that would otherwise fall to your internal team, including the ongoing tuning that keeps routing rules and retry logic effective as fax volume and workflows change.
Fax-over-IP transmission depends on correctly configured SIP trunking, and misconfiguration here is a common source of the connection-level failures covered above. Private Fax Cloud® deployments account for this at setup rather than leaving it to be discovered after go-live.
Because Private Fax Cloud® runs on infrastructure we control, it supports consistent security policy enforcement and business continuity planning across the fax environment, rather than depending on whatever infrastructure decisions happened to be in place when the original fax server was set up.
Epic can generate a fax through its native print path via Epic Print Server, which covers basic outbound transmission. It does not, on its own, provide the routing, retry logic, delivery confirmation, or audit trail that a dedicated fax server adds.
RightFax adds centralized tracking, automated retry and escalation, inbound routing across departments and modules, and an audit trail that supports compliance review—none of which Epic's built-in fax path handles on its own.
Yes. RightFax connects to Beaker's lab fax traffic and links it with the rest of the enterprise fax environment, rather than treating lab faxing as a separate, isolated process.
Yes. Radiant's imaging-related fax traffic routes through the same RightFax integration used elsewhere in Epic, giving Radiant users the same reliability and tracking as the rest of the deployment.
Yes. Inbound faxes can be matched to the correct patient record and routed into the appropriate queue, department, or system—including Epic itself or a connected ECM platform like OnBase—based on configurable rules.
Yes. Every fax transmission through RightFax is logged with sender, recipient, timestamp, and delivery status, giving your organization a record that supports HIPAA-related compliance review rather than relying on individual confirmation slips.
Fax isn't going away, but the manual work around it can. Private Fax Cloud pairs RightFax with Epic-specific configuration, so your team gets reliable fax without owning the infrastructure behind it.
Contact our team to talk through your current Epic fax setup and where a dedicated integration would help most.
