Referral authorization
4 pages- From
- Harborview Clinic · (555) 010-2208
- Received
- Tue 7:12 AM
- Indexed as
- Alvarez, Maria · referral
Opened in the channel by R. Patel, RN. Nothing printed.
The problem
Your faxes live on paper trays, printer logs and analog lines.
Every dedicated analog line costs an agency a monthly fee plus overage. The bigger cost is what arrives on paper. Medical records, referral authorizations and lab orders come off a shared machine and then have to be scanned, filed or chased. When a state auditor or a county health department asks for one document, staff go through binders and printer logs to find it.
- The line itself — a recurring charge for each number, whether or not it is used
- The paper — pages that sit on a tray in a shared room until someone collects them
- The re-entry — scanning and filing a document that arrived as a document
- The retrieval — the hours an audit request costs when the index is a binder
How it works
It arrives in the channel. It leaves from the channel.
A fax is a document about a patient, so in Buzz it lands where that patient is already being coordinated rather than in a separate inbox nobody owns.
1 · Receive
Incoming faxes post as cards
An inbound fax posts into the patient's Buzz care channel as a card with the pages attached, so the team sees it without printing anything. Agencies that route by function rather than by patient can send a line's traffic to a case-management group instead.
2 · Send
Out from a phone or a desktop
A clinician sends medical records or a physician order by fax from the same place, on iOS, Android or a browser, without going back to the office. Buzz runs on all three and keeps a user's information in sync across their devices.
3 · Retrieve
Indexed by date, sender and patient
Every transmission is indexed against the date, the sender and the patient context it arrived in, so an audit request is a search rather than an afternoon.
Illustrative
What the lines cost while they sit there
Move the slider to the number of dedicated analog fax lines your agency pays for today. Every figure below is illustrative arithmetic, not a quote.
4 lines
Assumes $50 per line per month. Overage, paper, toner and standalone e-fax subscriptions are not counted, and neither is the cost of Buzz.
$200
per month in line charges
$2,400
per year, the same lines
Those charges are for the line, not for the fax. The traffic itself moves over the internet in Buzz, which is why retiring a line does not mean giving up faxing.
Where agencies use it
Three jobs BuzzFax is already doing
Fewer lines, less paper
Retiring dedicated analog lines also retires the paper supplies and the standalone e-fax subscription that sat beside them. One behavioral health provider cut its fax costs by more than 60 percent, across 218 beds.
A transmission log a reviewer can follow
Digital transmission logs give a date, a sender and a patient context for each fax.
When the other end is not on secure messaging
A nurse in the field can send a wound photo or an assessment card straight to a physician's fax line when that office has nothing more modern to receive it on. The fax is the lowest common denominator, so Buzz speaks it.
“For CARF accreditation, we have to show how we improve patient care through technology. Buzz made that easy.”
Safety and data
The page never sits on a tray.
BuzzFax is part of the Buzz platform. It shares a thread with BuzzChat BuzzStreams BuzzFlow
Getting started
Start with the line that carries the most paper.
Not every number at once. One analog line, pointed at one Buzz group, so the documents it receives land in the patient's channel instead of on a tray.
- LinesOne of your existing analog fax lines, to begin with.
- HardwareNone. No machine, no dedicated PC, no server.
- TermsMonthly, quarterly or annual, whichever suits the way your agency budgets. You are never locked in against your will, and the notice period is 60 days.
Questions agencies ask
Do we have to port our existing fax numbers?
You can keep the agency fax numbers you publish today by porting them to Buzz, or take new virtual fax numbers for specific teams and branch locations instead.
Can field staff send faxes from a phone?
Yes. An authorized clinician can send or view a fax on iOS, Android, Mac or PC, and what they see stays in sync across their devices.
Does this replace a separate e-fax subscription?
That is the intent: the faxing sits inside the platform your team already uses for the patient, rather than in a second product with its own login and its own bill.
Where does a received fax actually live?
In the patient's Buzz care channel, as a card with the pages attached, visible to the care team in that channel. Agencies that prefer to route by function can point a line at a case-management group instead.
Does a fax get filed back into our EHR?
Every fax is filed to the patient's thread in Buzz with its transmission log. How it reaches your EHR depends on your setup, and we cover that in the demo.
Start small
Bring us one fax line and one audit request.
The fastest way to judge BuzzFax is to point one line at a Buzz group and then try to find a document from last month. Book a short scoping call and we will size the fax audit with you.