Electronic Health Records For Dummies

Faxing

Faxing documents generated within your practice’s EHR should be much easier than in the paper environment. The ability to fax EHR information directly to other providers is built into most EHR solutions. You may need to set up a fax modem to enable this, so make sure your vendor covers this in your training session.

You can route inbound faxes to your practice to an inbound fax list within the EHR. Designate someone to monitor faxes received while the practice is open. From the received faxes list, the EHR can associate faxed documents with a patient’s record and document type.

Your practice will continue to receive faxed renewal requests for prescriptions, but this should significantly decrease because of the electronic prescribing (e-prescribing) within the EHR. We provide guidance on managing faxed renewal requests later in this chapter.

Your practice may receive faxed lab results from labs your EHR doesn’t interface with. To enable decision support, you have to enter the lab test and result values into the EHR. If you decide to enter these faxed results as structured data into the EHR, have a nurse perform this task with appropriate physician review.