Data & TechnologyA recent MIT report found that despite billions of dollars of investment into new AI solutions, 95% of organizations are seeing no measurable ROI related to this popular technology.
One of the primary barriers to a strong return is that many AI tools don’t integrate directly with a healthcare organization’s existing technology stack. Fragmented, complex digital tools directly contribute to provider burnout, so on some level, it doesn’t matter how compelling a use case is. Clinicians and staff simply don’t want another tool in their already complicated digital ecosystem.
Where healthcare organizations can really win, and where AI applications hold the most promise, is by naturally integrating AI into existing, trusted technologies and processes.
Multi-factor ROI – Where AI Returns Value
When it comes to ROI, many in our industry are focused on where intelligent automation can alleviate staff burden, especially considering that staffing shortages were and will likely continue to be an acute challenge for healthcare leaders. Healthcare staff time is already limited, and organizations must find ways to elevate them from cumbersome, manual processes and data entry to refocus attention on the patient.
Applying AI to unstructured data (PDFs, faxes, scans, handwritten notes) can immediately remedy this challenge. Fax is still the most widely used communication tool in healthcare, and digital fax is increasingly usurping antiquated paper fax machines to make the process easier and more agile. Because digital cloud fax already converts a record, note or referral into a secure digital file, AI solutions—specifically those utilizing intelligent data extraction—can easily be applied. It can identify key information, classify the document, flag urgent cases, and directly input the data in the correct format within the patient’s record. For healthcare staff, this means a dramatic reduction in manual data entry, allowing them to speed documentation, intake and care, while focusing more time on the patient.
But to get to AI’s real value with digital fax, we need to look outside of healthcare’s staffing challenge and also consider the patient access crisis.
Heavily manual workflows like prior authorizations (PAs) and referrals are contributing to challenges associated with patient access. A 2024 American Medical Association prior authorization survey found that providers process an average of 45 PAs per week, with each requiring an average of 14 hours of staff time to process.
If it takes too long to confirm authorization for a service, a patient can suffer — 94% of the physicians polled noted these bottlenecks cause delays in care. Likewise, if a practice struggles to manage a multi-day referral queue, patients can get frustrated and find a new provider — one who is quicker to respond to their needs.
Calculating the ROI of Digital Fax and AI
Based on well-known industry averages, we can calculate the financial value of both recouping valuable staff time and reducing patient leakage due to delayed referrals or PAs.
- Staff time savings: Let’s consider a scenario where an organization receives 20,000 inbound pages of patient information per month.
- Average document size: 6 pages per document
- Total documents processed: 20,000 / 6 pages per document = approximately 3,333 documents
If we assume it takes staff an average of 10 minutes to manually process (classify, label, sort, index, and perform data entry for) each document:
| Metric | Calculation | Result |
| Total Minutes | 3,333 documents×10 minutes/document | 33,330 minutes |
| Total Staff Hours | 33,330 minutes/60 minutes/hour | 555.5 staff hours per month |
We’re looking at up to 33,333 minutes or 555.5 staff hours per month simply dedicated to data entry and document management.
Now, let’s add AI, like eFax® Clarity, to the mix.
eFax Clarity is an AI-powered intelligent data extraction solution that automates the conversion of unstructured documents into structured, actionable data–such as HL7 FHIR or Direct Secure Messages–facilitating instant processing and routing to the patient’s record. eFax Clarity takes between 30-60 seconds to complete extraction, depending on a document’s complexity. Even if we estimate on the higher end of that spectrum, eFax Clarity has now turned a 555.5 hour per month job into an automated workflow that can process the entire month’s documents in just 55.5 hours.
A total time savings of 500 hours per month.
Speed is only half the equation; scalability is what transforms a business.
Human workflows are inherently serial. Staff can only process one document at a time. When volume surges, queues form instantly, and that final document may sit untouched for hours or even days.
eFax Clarity replaces this linear queue with unlimited parallel capacity. It doesn’t require coffee breaks, sleep, or shifts. Whether your volume is 10 or 1,000, every document is processed instantly and simultaneously, ensuring your turnaround time remains constant regardless of load.
- Reducing patient leakage: Now, let’s consider bottlenecks associated with PAs and, more specifically, referrals. Millions of healthcare referrals are sent annually across the U.S., most of which via secure fax or digital fax. Organizations without AI extraction tools must manually sort through each referral, route to the correct department, then manually follow-up with patients, a process that can easily take 3-5 business days. In today’s consumer-centric world, this wait may cause patients to seek care elsewhere.
Let’s consider an example of an imaging center that receives an average of 30,000 imaging orders per month. If the center had upwards of a three-day backlog of referrals at any given time, that meant patients waited days for sometimes urgent requests. Frustrated, some would simply seek care at another organization that could respond faster to their inquiries. If the imaging center was losing even 10% of referrals, they were missing out on 3,000 patients per month. If we consider a basic average of an imaging service to be around $1,000, the 16-facility organization would be losing out on $3 million per month.
Uncovering More ROI From Your AI Solutions
The highest ROI in healthcare technology today can be found by identifying areas of high-volume manual work and applying AI to the tools staff already use. Instead of asking teams to learn a new platform, organizations are finding success by making their current systems smarter.
Deploying AI to target specific bottlenecks associated with referrals, orders, and prior authorizations, healthcare organizations can benefit from reduced leakage, faster time-to-appointment and associated positive financial benefits. As AI continues to advance in healthcare, these opportunities to optimize existing workflows with new capabilities will likely prove the best way to uncover AI’s true ROI.
Learn more about how eFax Clarity can boost ROI and operations today!
