Handling incoming faxes in DrChrono: the complete workflow
Every step of the manual process, how long each takes, where it breaks at volume, and what the options are for automating it.
- Processing one incoming fax in DrChrono by hand takes roughly three to five minutes end to end — longer when the patient is new or an authorization has to be entered.
- The workflow is seven steps: open, classify, find the patient, attach, task, update flags and authorizations, mark read.
- At about fifty faxes a day that is three to five hours of staff time, which is where most practices start looking for a way out.
- DrChrono has no inbound-fax API, so every automation option works by driving the web interface. That constraint shapes every product in this category.
- Four broad options exist: do it by hand, use DrChrono’s native fax handling, use a general fax-automation vendor, or use something built specifically for DrChrono.
The manual workflow, step by step
- 1
Open the fax in the message centre
Incoming faxes land in DrChrono's message centre as unassigned documents. Someone opens each one and reads enough of it to know what it is and who it belongs to.
Typically 20–40 seconds
- 2
Identify the document type
Decide whether it is a referral, an imaging result, an authorization, a records request, a prescription document, or something else. This determines everything downstream — who it goes to and what has to happen next.
Typically 10–30 seconds
- 3
Find the patient
Search the patient database by name, then confirm with date of birth. Names repeat; this is where misfiling starts. If the patient is new — common with referrals — a chart has to be created first.
Typically 30–90 seconds, longer for a new patient
- 4
Attach the document to the chart
Upload the fax into the patient's documents and give it a description. The description matters more than it looks: a chart with six documents called 'Fax' is a chart nobody can search.
Typically 30–60 seconds
- 5
Create and route the task
Create a task, write a title that says what the document is and what needs doing, and assign it to the right person — usually the provider's own assistant rather than a shared queue.
Typically 40–70 seconds
- 6
Update flags and authorizations
For insurance documents, the authorization number and date range are entered and the patient's flags updated. Skipping this is the single most expensive omission in the workflow — the document is filed, but the claim still gets denied.
Typically 60–120 seconds when it applies
- 7
Mark as read and move on
The fax is marked handled so the next person does not process it twice.
Typically 5 seconds
Where it breaks at volume
The workflow above is fine at ten faxes a day. The failure modes appear as volume rises, and none of them look like failures at the time:
- Interruption cost. Front-desk staff process faxes between phone calls and patients. The three-to-five minute figure assumes no interruption, which is not how a front desk works.
- Filed but not actioned. A document attached to the chart without a task looks identical to one that was handled. Authorizations are the expensive case.
- Generic descriptions. Under time pressure, descriptions get shorter. Six months later nobody can find anything.
- Same-name misfiling. Matching on name alone is fast and occasionally catastrophic.
- Backlogs are invisible. Nobody sees the queue depth until a referral is two weeks old.
Your options
There are four honest approaches. We build one of them, so weigh this accordingly — but the trade-offs below are real and we would rather you picked the right one.
Keep doing it by hand
Correct for low volume. If you are under about fifteen faxes a day and nobody is drowning, automation is solving a problem you do not have.
DrChrono's own fax handling
Faxes arrive in the message centre and can be attached to charts from there. It is included and it works. What it does not do is read the document, decide what it is, or route a task on its own — the seven steps above are still done by a person.
A general fax-automation vendor
Several vendors automate medical fax intake across many EHRs. Breadth is the advantage: if you run more than one system, or may switch, a multi-EHR tool is the safer choice. The trade-off is depth — behaviour specific to one EHR's workflow is usually shallower.
Something built only for DrChrono
The opposite trade-off. Deeper behaviour inside one system — routing by provider, entering authorizations, matching your own task conventions — at the cost of being useless if you leave DrChrono. This is what Zally is.
We have deliberately not published a feature-by-feature comparison against named competitors. Pricing and capabilities in this category are mostly quote-only and change often, and we would rather say nothing than publish something we cannot source.
Last updated: September 2026
