If referrals arrive by fax, the next step is getting the document to someone who can review it. The intake team needs to check the patient details, find out whether anything is missing, and arrange the appropriate follow-up.
Connecting those tasks to your messaging service gives staff a way to start outreach once a referral has been accepted. Here's how to structure the integration.
Create an intake record from the fax
Pinnacle supports fax through its dedicated HIPAA API. Fax access is enabled during healthcare onboarding.
The FAX.RECEIVED event supplies a fax ID. Your application can use it to retrieve the document through the authenticated fax API and create an intake task. Staff then verify the patient, check the pages are readable, and route the referral for review. Clinical priority belongs with the authorized reviewer.
Keep the fax reference with the intake record so staff can find the document without searching a separate inbox. Preserve the time it first arrived, including when you're still waiting for supporting information.
Receive the referral
Match the patient and check the document is readable.
Review the paperwork
Find missing information and arrange the appropriate review.
Contact the patient
Record the response and any accepted booking.
Follow up after the visit
Return the report for the referring team to review.
Give incomplete referrals a clear place to wait
Record the specific missing item, who you've asked for it, and who will follow up. That lets the team distinguish a referral awaiting a document from one that's ready for scheduling.
Do the same for unreadable pages, a wrong destination, or a possible duplicate. These need different actions. Keep the history when a record is corrected so the original wait doesn't disappear from view.
Start patient outreach after acceptance
Once the referral is accepted, assign the outreach to someone who can arrange the scheduling step. Check the recipient details, permission, and communication preferences before sending a text. A number in a fax doesn't establish permission for every messaging program.
Keep successful contact separate from attempted contact. If a patient asks for another time, the staff member answering should be able to find the referral and the related conversation together.
Confirm an appointment only once the scheduling system has accepted the booking. If you've queued reminders, keep them tied to the current appointment details so a later change doesn't leave old messages running.
Keep following the referral after booking
The IHI referral guide describes the coordination across review, outreach, the visit, and returned information. The federal referral-loop quality measure focuses on receipt of a specialist report by the referring clinician.
Track those later steps separately from the appointment booking. Your care teams will need to agree on who returns the report, who checks it arrived, and how the referring team records its review.
For the operational side, look at where referrals spend time waiting: intake to review, acceptance to patient contact, and contact to booking. Give each open item a next action and someone responsible for it.
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