Faxed referrals to scheduled patients: automating intake end to end

Despite everything else that has gone digital, referrals still arrive by fax. Staff read them, retype demographics, look up insurance, call the patient and schedule — often hours or days after the fax arrived. Each manual step adds delay and error.

The anatomy of a referral

A typical referral packet includes patient demographics, insurance details, the referring clinician, the reason for referral and supporting documents like an ECG or lab panel. All of it is there — it's just trapped in an image.

How Murphi automates it

Murphi reads incoming faxes, PDFs and portal referrals, extracts the key fields and fills the intake form automatically. It verifies insurance, flags priority based on the reason for referral, and attaches supporting documents to the right patient. Staff review a structured form instead of a blurry fax, then create the patient and schedule the visit in the EHR in one step.

Priority matters

Not every referral is equal. An urgent cardiology referral for exertional chest pain should be scheduled within days, not weeks. Automatic priority flags help front-desk teams see which referrals need attention first, rather than working strictly in arrival order.

Closing the loop

Once the patient is scheduled, Murphi can text them a confirmation and a pre-visit intake link, and notify the referring clinician that the referral was received. That closed loop reduces the phone calls that usually follow a referral.

What teams see

Practices that automate referral intake report faster time-to-schedule, fewer lost referrals and less time spent retyping data. Staff move from data entry to exception handling — reviewing the few referrals that genuinely need a human decision.

The fax machine may not disappear soon. But the work it creates can.