For nutrition and wellness professionals, being able to connect with other providers of your clients’ care team is fundamental for providing quality care with timely recommendations. Connecting with your clients’ doctor, specialist, therapist and more, provides a more comprehensive look into a clients’ wellbeing. E-Fax is a way to share and receive chart notes, lab reports, documents, and other information that contains private health information. By sharing assessments, goals and recommendations, the entire care team the client stays up-to-date for overall improved care.

As technology has progressed, most healthcare providers have transitioned to using electronic medical record (EMR) systems for documenting client notes and private health information. Traditionally, these EMR systems do not speak with each other, making it difficult for different healthcare practitioners to securely connect with each other, and share private health information on their clients. Email is not HIPAA-compliant, and puts your client information at risk.

E-Faxing through the Healthie platform allows you to easily (and securely) send and receive client information between other healthcare providers. Fax a nutrition assessment, progress notes, lab work and more for overall improved communication with your clients’ care team. Even more, use your E-Fax as a way to market your wellness practice, and offer it as a way for other healthcare providers to connect with you electronically. Click here to learn how you can start using these services through one of Healthie’s Free Starter Plans today.

In this article, we’re sharing benefits to interdisciplinary communication, best practices for using efax services and how to leverage the Healthie E-Fax system to market your wellness practice.

E-fax Services: a relevant way to connect in healthcare

Communicating with other healthcare providers on your clients’ care team facilitates treating the “whole” person. Not only will sending assessments and updates to others providers be beneficial, but being able to receive updates helps you have all the information you need to make tailored wellness recommendations. E-Faxing allows documents, chart notes, assessments, lab work, test results and exam summaries to be securely send from provider, to provider, regardless of the EHR system being used.

With Healthie, when you receive an E-Fax, you can immediately save the received documents within your clients’ chart, and access quickly at any time. Sending an E-Fax is as easy as sending an email or message, and no longer requires a physical fax machine in your office. Securely send important client information to other healthcare providers with this HIPAA-compliant feature.

Benefits of Efax within an EMR platform

• Save office space: e-faxing eliminates the need for a physical fax machine
• Quickly send client chart notes: you can send a chart note with just a few clicks, just as easily as sending an email or message.
• Create a referral network within your Healthie account: store physician fax numbers in the platform for quick access in the future, and to serve as the basis of your interdisciplinary referral network
• Receive important client information: Receive referral and lab information directly within system and assign to a client’s profile
• Market your wellness practice: your information (business overview, logo)  pre-populates into a cover letter that is sent as the top page of every fax

How interdisciplinary communication benefits wellness providers:

1. Collaborate to see an overview of clients health status: care team can share assessments of clients, allowing for the team to see the clients’ health status in a comprehensive way (as opposed to individual pieces to a puzzle)
2. Limits oversights of important health concerns: referring to other healthcare professionals (and being referred to) will help specialists work together to identify and diagnose health concerns.
3. Stay up to date to set relevant goals: connecting to share ongoing assessments and updates helps the team to align goals, so that the client can have a clear path of the changes they need to make for overall improvements in their health
4. Improved client care and outcomes: treating the client as a “whole,” makes a client feel valued, heard and empowers them to make changes

Best Practices: Leveraging Efax Services to Grow Your Wellness Business

Faxing with other healthcare providers can be a powerful way to build referral partnerships – this could be with local physicians, therapists, fitness centers, and other nutritionists. Here are some best practices we have seen, when it comes to using e-faxing to build business and drive growth.

Have clients sign a medical release form

In order to be HIPAA-compliant, it’s important to obtain written consent from your client for each healthcare provider that you want to share information with. You (and the provider you’re communicating with) should both obtain a written content form. Healthie’s all-in-one practice management software is completely HIPAA- & PCI compliant, sign up for a free account today.

Download a Sample Medical Release Form

E-fax Chart Notes to other healthcare providers after a session

• Nurture relationships with referral partners and maintain good communication. Not only is this best practice when it comes to providing the best possible care for your clients, but referral partners will appreciate your close communication and follow-up reports.
• This extends to chart notes, lab reports, and other documents in a client’s file.
• We recommend: E-fax chart notes within 48 hours of a client session

Publish your E-fax number, so that it is easy to find

• Include your e-fax number on business cards and other promotional materials for your business
• List your e-fax line on your website, so it’s easy for others to locate

Market your wellness practice with efax services

1. Add to your business cards: when working with clients, it’s good practice to always give them a few business cards at the end of your session. They can share with friends or family as a referral, with their doctor or other members of their healthcare team. For example, if your client sees you for nutritional counseling, and they also work with a therapist. Ask them for their therapists contact information (as appropriate) and provide a business card that they can give their therapist at their next session.
2. Reach out to relevant healthcare providers and share how to connect with you. If you create business cards, pamphlets or other marketing materials for your practice, you can physically (or virtually) start to reach out to other healthcare providers. Include your E-Fax and let them know that if they have a client to refer, they can easily E-Fax you a referral document (some insurance-based providers require a written referral from an MD to reimburse for nutritional care),
3. Use E-Fax to build a referral network: always send an E-fax to the referring provider, even if they do not explicitly ask for it to build a relationship. To build up your referral network, you can keep track of the physicians you communicate the most with via E-Fax, and save their Name, Contact Information, and Fax Number directly within the Healthie platform, in order for information to pre-populate the following time.

Using E-Fax Through Healthie

Setting up your E-Fax line is easy! For our Practice Plus Members and up, E-Fax is included. If you’re on a Begginings or Small Practice plan, you can add E-Fax services by emailing us hello@gethealthie.com. Already have a fax line? Reach out to us to port your line (efax service) through our platform. Looking to sign up to our free starter plan? Simply click here to get started.

Add a physician or healthcare provider to your referring provider network

You can send either a client chart note or a document through the Healthie platform. To fax a doctor or other healthcare provider with a client’s note, you’ll want to add them to the “referring physician” section of a client’s profile. Include the fax number in this section. After you’ve “saved,” the referring healthcare provider’s information, you can go ahead and send them an e-fax. If a provider has referral other clients in the past, you won’t need to re-enter their information, simply select their name from the drop down in the “referring physician,” tab.

E-Fax chart notes or documents

• Send a client chart note or assessment: Go to your client’s chart, from the “clients” tab on your dashboard. After you’ve written and saved a chart note, go to your ARCHIVED client notes. Select the date/note you’d like to send. On the top right-hand side you’ll see a few actions you can take, select “Select Fax.”
• Send a document: Go to the “documents” tab from your Healthie dashboard. Select the document or folder you’d like to send. On the top right-hand side, select “Send Fax.” You can select the healthcare provider you’d like to fax from the dropdown. Then select the document you’d like to attach.

Automatically include a cover page with your business information

Healthie’s “Cover Page” automatically pre-populates core information about your business on the first page of any outgoing fax. This includes information like Business Name and Address, Logo, and more. You’ll also be able to pull from your directory of saved Fax numbers that you’ve previously used.

Send progress note updates after each session

The “Notes” capability is used to share a summary. Every time that you meet with a client, you’ll be able to update their chart with a new progress note. Use the Healthie templates (ie SOAP or ADIME chart templates), free text or create your own follow-up template.

To send a progress note via E-Fax, you may want to copy from a section in your chart note, or write an overview, depending on your relationship with the provider.

Confirm your e-fax was received

To see the status of your e-faxes, you can select the “Faxing” tab from your Healthie dashboard. You can see a summary of all of the faxes you’ve sent and received. For each item, you can view whether the e-fax is pending, sent successfully or failed to send.

For Healthie Members: here’s our list of resources to support your group wellness practice on the Healthie platform:

E-Faxing: Troubleshooting Guide

Overview of Healthie E-Faxing  

Sending a Document or Chart Note Via E-Fax

Managing Referring Physicians on E-Fax Directory

Receiving an E-Fax Through Healthie

Cover Letter for E-Fax

Best Practices: Leveraging E-Faxing to Grow Your Business