More than one third of all documents sent to healthcare facilities are still faxes

Documo, the leader in secure cloud fax and intelligent document processing, today released the results of its survey, “Stuck in the Fax Lane.” Despite years of digital transformation, fax remains an entrenched frontline tool in healthcare, according to the findings. But it's still failing clinicians where it matters most: speed, compliance, and confidence. Documo’s national survey exposes a dangerous gap between automation adoption and real-world outcomes.

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According to the Documo 2025 Healthcare Fax & Workflow Survey, "Stuck in the Fax Lane," 88% of healthcare practitioners say fax-related delays impact patient care. The survey shows a clear gap: most organizations still handle fax manually, but the most automated teams are the most confident in their workflows. Cloud fax and Intelligent Document Processing (IDP) can reduce IT fire drills, streamline workflows, and give healthcare administrators the visibility and control they need to protect compliance and improve outcomes.

The data reveals clinicians are overwhelmed by manual work and underwhelmed by current solutions. The report surfaces three specific workflow breakdowns — delay, routing, and manual overload — and offers a path toward trustable, intelligent automation with intelligent document processing (IDP).

Since healthcare’s reliance on fax hasn’t been eradicated despite 25 years of radical digital transformation, the three most pressing automation needs are triage prioritization, routing confidence, and reducing manual efforts in ways that actually stick.

The report surveyed more than 100 administrators, health information management, and IT professionals that work in a mid-size hospital, clinic, ambulatory care center, nursing facility, residential treatment center, healthcare agency or surgical center. These professionals are directly involved with designing workflows, managing intake and routing, or purchasing and auditing compliance.

Among the survey highlights:

• 35% of inbound documents to hospitals and healthcare facilities are still faxes. (Over 45% for higher volume organizations)
• 52% of faxes require staff intervention and manual processing
• 44% of faxes are labeled as time-sensitive

“Reducing the signal to noise ratio issues in healthcare communications is critical to drive administrative efficiency and more importantly, patient outcomes,” said Denis Whelan, CEO of Documo. “At Documo, we’re committed to making healthcare workflows secure, simple, and interoperable.”

Key takeaways from the survey:

• When faxes are delayed, patients are treated with incomplete information, have to wait longer, or get rescheduled. This raises the risk of misdiagnosis, incorrect prescriptions, and compliance breaches. 58% of respondents say fax-related delays often impact care, especially those with higher fax volumes or lower routing confidence. Claims, intake forms, medication records, and prior authorizations are among the most error-prone documents.
• The most confident teams are the most automated teams. Only 29% of respondents say their workflows are fully automated. Full or mostly automated workflows strongly correlate with routing confidence. Manual processes consistently drive time loss, errors, tracking issues, and frustration.
• AI cannot be bolted into a broken system. 75–89% of organizations are investing in automation, interoperability, or intelligent document processing (IDP), but major barriers remain. Top challenges include cost (44%), security concerns (43%), and integration complexity (37%). Trust in AI is tied to how well it connects to EHRs and delivers accurate, useful clinical context. High-confidence organizations are already automating more and pushing further ahead.
• Fixing fax could be a way to build momentum for digital change. Compliance, patient safety, and claims accuracy are top priorities for respondents. Workflow fixes tied to these outcomes carry more urgency and executive buy-in. Fax tools that reduce delays, improve routing, and connect to EHRs are already seen as key investments. AI-powered features like patient matching, document identification, and summarization were noted as especially valuable.

Respondents noted the number one problem found with faxes was delays, followed by wasted time, incorrect information, tracking errors, legibility problems and HIPAA concerns.

Notable differences were found between hospitals and other healthcare facilities including ambulatory clinics, nursing facilities, residential treatment centers, and healthcare agencies. Hospitals are more confident in routing (81%) than clinics (56%) or residential facilities (51%). Hospitals report more fax-related claim delays (59 per year) — twice as many as residential and health agencies. Clinics review more faxed documents manually (61%) than hospitals (50%). Non-hospitals are more likely to split multi-page faxes and report delays from the extra effort. Clinics (56%) and residential (51%) report more time-sensitive faxes than hospitals (43%).

A senior director of operations at a global behavioral health company said, “Documo delivers on its core promise: secure, compliant document transmission without requiring physical fax machines. It’s reliable for our day-to-day needs, and the platform is simple enough that most users can get up and running with minimal training. The audit trail and delivery confirmations add a layer of confidence, especially when working with sensitive documents."

An executive summary and the full report with charts and graphics is available here.

Find Documo at HLTH 2025 (Booth #4318) from October 19-22 in Las Vegas. Meet with the team to see how Cloud Fax paired with Intelligent Document Processing (IDP) will eliminate wasted hours, reduce errors, and remove the current bottlenecks of manual workflows. Book a meeting here.

About Documo

Documo helps healthcare organizations eliminate the burden of manual faxing with cloud-based, HIPAA-compliant fax and intelligent automation. By combining secure delivery with AI-powered document processing, Documo reduces administrative delays, eases staff burnout, and improves care coordination — so providers can spend more time on patients, not paperwork. Learn more at documo.com.

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