Fax Management Workflow Guide

Second Door's Role in Fax Management

Most practices have a fax workflow that looks something like this: check your email inbox or fax portal, download the attachment, open it, read it, decide what it is, figure out which patient it belongs to, and upload it to the right chart in your EMR. Every fax gets the same treatment because your team doesn't know what a fax is until someone opens it.

When you connect your fax line to Second Door, your faxes still go wherever they go today. Nothing changes on that side. But now Second Door also receives a copy, reads every fax with AI, and sorts them: referrals become leads on your dashboard with patient information already extracted, and everything else is tagged by document type and associated with a patient. The sorting step is done before your team touches anything.

That also means you now have two inboxes receiving the same faxes. This guide explains how to handle that.

Two Ways to Use Second Door for Faxes

Which approach you choose depends on how you feel about your current fax workflow:

Option A: Second Door for referrals only. Keep working all faxes in your current system, whether that's your email inbox, fax portal, or something else. Second Door plucks out the referrals, turns them into leads, and surfaces them on your dashboard. When you come across those same referrals in your current system, skip them. Second Door already handled them. Everything else you work exactly as you do now.
Option B: Second Door for all faxes. Stop checking your old fax inbox. Open Second Door's fax inbox instead. Every fax is already tagged by document type and associated with a patient name. Download the PDF, upload it to the right chart in your EMR. The step where your team opens every fax to read it and sort it—gone.

Either way, referrals are pulled out of the noise and worked immediately. The difference is whether Second Door also replaces the rest of your fax sorting.

Your Daily Routine

If you chose Option A (Second Door for referrals only):

Check your lead dashboard for fax leads. Open app.seconddoorhealth.com. Fax referrals that arrived since your last check appear in the "New" column with a "Fax" source label. Work these leads using your normal lead workflow. (See Second Door Workflow Guide: Working Leads Daily for the full routine.)
Work your other faxes in your current system. Check your email inbox, fax portal, or wherever your faxes land today. When you come across a referral that Second Door already captured as a lead, skip it. Handle everything else as you normally would.

If you chose Option B (Second Door for all faxes):

Check your lead dashboard for fax leads. Open app.seconddoorhealth.com. Fax referrals that arrived since your last check appear in the "New" column with a "Fax" source label. Work these leads using your normal lead workflow. (See Lead Management Workflow Guide for the full routine.)
Open your fax inbox. Every non-referral fax is already categorized (plan of care, authorization, administrative) and associated with a patient when possible.
Download and upload. For each fax, download the PDF and upload it to the appropriate patient chart in your EMR.
Clean up anything the AI got wrong. If something in the fax inbox is actually a new patient referral, reclassify it as a lead so it enters your outreach pipeline. If a lead on your dashboard isn't actually a referral, mark it "Not a Lead" (three dots on the lead card, then Not a Lead, then choose the reason).

Best Practices

Assign fax management to a specific person or team. The practices that get the most value are the ones where someone owns the daily check. If you're just getting started, assign one person for the first few weeks to build the habit.
Work fax leads the same morning they arrive. A patient whose referring physician sent a fax on Monday should hear from your office on Monday. Speed to contact is one of the biggest drivers of whether a referral converts to a booked eval.
Use "Not a Lead" liberally. If a fax isn't a new patient referral, mark it immediately. Keeping your pipeline clean means your New column only shows patients who actually need outreach.
Don't overthink the two-inbox overlap. If you chose Option A, the only change is checking your dashboard for fax leads. If you chose Option B, you stop checking your old inbox entirely. Either way, you aren't doing the same work twice.

Your EMR and Second Door

Second Door doesn't push faxes or documents into your EMR. Your EMR is where you manage patient charts, scheduling, and documentation. That doesn't change.

Second Door sorts your faxes, identifies referrals, and tracks your outreach to new patients. When a document needs to live in a patient's chart, you download the PDF from Second Door and upload it to your EMR. What Second Door saves you is the time your team used to spend opening every fax to sort it themselves.

Common Questions

Will I lose my faxes if I set up forwarding to Second Door?

No. Forwarding adds Second Door as an additional recipient. Your faxes still go wherever they go today.
Is this going to be double the work?

No. If you chose Option A, your only new step is checking your lead dashboard for fax referrals. Everything else stays the same. If you chose Option B, you're replacing your old fax inbox with Second Door's, not adding to it. Either way, Second Door is doing the sorting work your team used to do manually.
Do I still need to process faxes in my EMR?

Yes. Second Door doesn't push documents into your EMR. For anything that needs to live in a patient's chart, you download the PDF from Second Door and upload it to your EMR. What changes is that the fax is already sorted and tagged before you touch it.
What if Second Door creates a lead for a fax that isn't a referral?

Mark it "Not a Lead" on the lead card. Two clicks and it's removed from your active pipeline.
What if a referral ends up in the fax inbox instead of as a lead?

Reclassify it. You can promote any fax inbox item to a lead, and it will appear on your dashboard for your team to work.