Partners & Integrations
Advancing Fax’s Future: The Business Case for Integrating eFax® in athenaOne® Workflows
Partners & IntegrationsHealthcare workflows depend on the timely, secure exchange of information. Yet, for many organizations, outdated faxing remains a critical but cumbersome stumbling block. Manual paper handling, degraded image quality, and infrastructure complexity often lead to significant delays in patient care.
In a recent webinar, I examined how the seamless eFax® integration with athenaOne® is solving these challenges. I was joined by experts from our partner, athenahealth, and an active athenaOne customer, Springfield Clinic—a large, multi-specialty practice in Illinois—to discuss how shifting to a cloud-based digital fax solution revolutionized their operations.
How the eFax® Integration Works in athenaOne®
The eFax integration is not a bolt-on application; it is a native function within the athenaOne environment, engineered for seamless, secure digital faxing directly inside current clinical workflows.
Existing local fax numbers are ported to eFax, maintaining continuity for departments and partners, while all faxes are digitized and delivered directly to an organization’s athenaOne tablespace.
Integrations at a glance
HIPAA-compliant and HITRUST r2 Certified solution ensures data integrity
Delivers 99.5% uptime with rapid, secure transmission for mission-critical workflows.
Keep your existing local fax numbers through a managed migration process led by an eFax specialist
Faxes are digitized and delivered directly to your athenaOne tablespace, appearing in the Clinical Inbox and searchable on the Faxes Received page.
Eliminates cost from local fax lines, hardware, and manual call forwarding.
Includes solution training and access to a US-based support team, available 24/7/365
The Challenge: Floor-to-Ceiling Backlogs
Springfield Clinic faced a daunting challenge across their nearly 100 locations. Their fax infrastructure was a fragmented mix of hard-wired machines and various digital solutions, leading to massive operational bottlenecks .
Kelsey Dannenberger, Lead Business Transformation Specialist at Springfield Clinic, described the severity of the situation for their central Health Information Management (HIM) team:
“At our highest point, we were at six months of backup, but we ran pretty consistently at about three months of backup. We’re not talking about a little stack of paper… that backup is floor-to-ceiling, room-to-room.”
Tianna Webster, Senior Project Manager, reinforced the scale of the problem, noting that they were dealing with a volume to the tune of several hundred thousand sheets of paper.
This backlog directly impacted patient care. Providers struggled to find critical documents, such as consult notes or test results, before patient visits. Clinicians were often forced to track down a needle in a haystack of that singular piece of paper just to prepare for a visit.
The Solution: A Better Way to Integrate Fax
Before this integration, getting faxed documents into athenaOne often involved a forwarding process. Practices would receive faxes, often on paper, scan them, and forward them to an athenahealth 800 number for processing. This frequently resulted in degraded image quality, transmission breaks, and duplicate work.
The eFax integration with athenaOne instantly addresses many of these frequent faults. Instead of forwarding documents, customers port their existing fax numbers directly to the eFax cloud. This allows for a secure, digital handoff of the pristine first copy of the document straight to athenahealth’s Document Services team. The result? Vastly improved image quality, higher reliability, and faster turnaround times.
A Seamless Integration: Keeping the 80-Year-Old Number
Implementing a major technology change is difficult, especially when managing relationships with approximately 14 different carriers. However, the transition to eFax was strategic and user-friendly.
A critical requirement for Springfield Clinic was maintaining their existing fax numbers to avoid disrupting referring providers. Webster highlighted the importance of this, noting they needed to ensure a many-to-one relationship where multiple clinic fax numbers could point to a singular athena department.
The team was relieved to find they could port their numbers easily—even the historic ones.
“Some of these providers have had [their fax numbers] for years. I think almost 80 years is our oldest number. We can’t change that”, shared Dannenberger.
The Results: Goodbye to the Big Stack of Paper
The impact of the eFax integration was immediate. It eliminated the need for physical paper handling and re-scanning, streamlining the entire clinical workflow.
Webster summarized the operational victory perfectly:
“The big stack of paper is thankfully gone. It eliminated the paper. It eliminated the re-scan. It eliminated countless clicks and just general human error when you lose things and you’re having to manually process.”
For Springfield Clinic, this integration delivered more than a technical upgrade; it replaced fragmented, analog processes with a durable, scalable solution aligned with the needs of a modern, compliant healthcare organization.
Key Outcomes for Springfield Clinic:
- Elimination of Backlog: The HIM team now processes documents in real-time, often on the same day.
- Rapid Availability: In urgent cases, staff can view documents immediately in the Faxes Received bucket rather than hunting for physical paper.
- Improved Provider and Staff Satisfaction: With reliable delivery, direct routing to appropriate users or departments, and measurable productivity gains, staff could focus on higher-value activities—and providers could count on timely, complete information for patient care.
- Infrastructure Consolidation: The clinic consolidated approximately 15 fax vendors down to one, simplifying IT support.
- Process Efficiency and Cost Reduction: Replacing manual paper workflows with digital fax management enabled significant time savings for staff, reduction in lost or delayed documents, and elimination of expenses tied to paper, toner, dedicated phone lines, and hardware maintenance.
- Auditability and Compliance: Every fax action is logged with granular audit trails, supported by HITRUST certification and HIPAA-compliant processes, enhancing both oversight and regulatory posture.
Modernize Your Fax Workflow
Springfield Clinic’s experience is a testament to the transformative power of modernizing your fax processes. By embedding secure digital faxing directly into your athenaOne workflow, you can reduce administrative waste, strengthen compliance, and empower your team to focus on what matters most: your patients.
Interested in learning more about Springfield Clinic’s experience with eFax? Watch the full webinar here.
