Requesting outside records by fax, one safe step at a time

The problem

A condition reported by a hospital or a specialist shows up in the health plan's claims, but the practice cannot act on it, or document it, without the outside records. Requesting them by hand means finding the patient's signed release form, filling in the facility and its records fax number, writing the date, and faxing it, one patient at a time. It is slow enough that it often doesn't happen.

What was built

An RPA bot that requests the records. Staff pick the facility and confirm its records fax. The bot takes the patient's signed release form from the EHR, writes in the facility, its fax number and the request date, adds a cover page, and sends it. It is packaged so it can move into the practice's operations dashboard.

What was hard

Every scanned release form is a little different: shifted, tilted, faded, scaled. Fixed positions don't work, so the bot finds the blank lines itself on each scan.

The safety rules took more thought than the form-filling. A fax that might already have gone out is held until a person confirms. A form that was already written on, or is more than a year old, is never sent; the patient is asked to sign a new one instead. Sending twice by accident is designed to be impossible.

Result

On the form-filling test bench, 29 of 29 cases passed, including the awkward scans. The first test fax to the practice's own fax line arrived as three pages. The bot is tested and packaged; it is not yet in daily use, which is why this page doesn't claim any volume or time figure.

Where the numbers come from

The bench run and the test fax, both recorded in the work log on 14 October 2026.