Fax and referrals

The fax inbox

Fax Inbox holds every fax sent to your HealOS fax number. Each one is read on arrival: HealOS classifies the document, extracts the fields that matter — patient name, date of birth, date of service, referring provider, insurance — and shows them beside the PDF so nobody retypes a cover sheet. A row shows you three things: what the document is, which patient it belongs to, and whether it has reached the chart. - Automatic (high confidence) means the extraction matched a patient confidently. - Manual review means it needs a human — usually a blurred page, a missing date of birth, or two patients who could both be the match. - Corrections you make are saved with the document, so what goes to the chart is what you approved. Search the inbox by patient or text, and open a fax to read the page alongside the extracted fields. Linking the patient A fax cannot be filed until it is linked to a patient. Where HealOS is confident it links for you and says so. Where more than one chart could be the person, it shows you the candidates and asks — better a question than the wrong chart. If the patient does not exist yet, you can create them in the connected EHR from the same screen. Fax packets Multi-document faxes — a referral with records and an insurance card, say — are grouped as a packet. Work through the documents inside it, set the note type and date of service, dismiss pages that are noise, and file the rest together. A packet stays open until you close it, so a half-worked referral is never lost. Next: Filing a fax into the chart.

Filing a fax into the chart

Once a fax is linked to a patient, file it. What the button says depends on your EHR: File to chart, Sync to ModMed, Insert into Practice Fusion, Post to patient document, Insert into DrChrono, and so on. HealOS uses the connection you already set up under Integrations. Filing puts the fax PDF in the patient's chart, and for the EHRs that support it also pushes the extracted values rather than just the image. When it lands you will see a confirmation — "Document posted", "Filed to SimplePractice", "The fax PDF is in the patient's ModMed chart" — and the row is marked as in the chart so nobody files it twice. Why filing is greyed out or fails - "Link a patient first to enable sync." No patient is linked yet. - "Practice Fusion is turned off." Open Integrations → Practice Fusion → Manage and switch it on. Practice Fusion filing runs through the browser extension, so a Practice Fusion tab has to be open — HealOS says "Open Practice Fusion in a tab. The extension will start syncing now." - "DrChrono needs to be reconnected." The EHR connection expired. Reconnect it under Integrations; nothing in the inbox is lost. - "More than one client could be this patient." Pick the right chart, or create a new patient. - Filing failed with no obvious reason: retry from the row menu once. If it fails again, send us the fax's date and the patient initials — the error the EHR returned is in our logs and usually names a required field the chart is missing. Creating the patient from a fax Where the EHR allows it, Create patient in … makes the chart from the extracted demographics and then files the document into it in one step. Check the date of birth before you confirm; a fax cover sheet is the most common place a wrong one comes from.

Your fax number and the referral pipeline

Getting a fax number A fax number is assigned to your practice through checkout on the Fax Numbers screen; it is a paid add-on, billed per number. Once assigned, the number is yours and inbound faxes appear in the inbox immediately. If you have an existing fax number you want to keep, ask support — porting is handled case by case. Fax activity — what arrived, what was sent, what failed — is listed under the number so you can prove a fax reached you. The referral pipeline Referrals turns inbound referrals into a list you can actually work, instead of a pile of faxes. Each referral moves through stages: - Awaiting contact — arrived, nobody has called the patient yet. - Seen — the patient has been seen. - Closed — done. - Lost — the patient never converted. Marking these honestly is what makes the numbers useful. The screen shows Avg Days to Schedule and Conversion Rate across the pipeline, which is the number most practices have never had: how many referred patients actually got through the door, and how long it took. Referrals link to the fax that produced them, so the source document is always one click away, and to the patient once linked. A referral that should not be there Delete it from the row menu, or mark it lost with the reason. Deleting a referral does not delete the fax — the document stays in the inbox.