AI-powered fax labeling for document management

Leveraging AI-powered fax labeling to help boost efficiency

Fax may feel like a relic from another era, but in healthcare, it remains a daily reality — billions of pages flow through practices each year. For many organizations, the time-consuming task of sorting, labeling, and routing incoming documents is still a largely manual process. That means staff are spending valuable minutes (and mental energy) every day reading through documents just to figure out what they are and where they belong.

At athenahealth, we’re turning that process on its head by leveraging the power of AI to help label incoming admin faxes. Find out how AI-powered fax labeling helps your team focus on what matters most: delivering care.

From manual sorting to intelligent automation

We introduced the Predicted Document Labels for Admin Documents in the Summer 25.7 release. Now, when an admin document arrives via external fax, the content is immediately scanned to determine the potential label(s) for it.

If the model identifies an accurate label, AI will automatically apply it to the document. Practice staff have the flexibility to change the suggested label or enter a label manually as needed. If the AI feature can’t confidently predict an accurate label, it will clearly indicate lower confidence in the accuracy of the labels provided. In summation:

• High confidence: The label is automatically applied — no action required.
• Lower confidence: The AI still presents the top label suggestions for staff review or input.
• Flexibility: At any time, practice staff can override a suggestion or make a change that best fits practice needs.

This labeling functionality is fully integrated into existing workflows — labels appear when opening documents from the Clinical Inbox or Patient Chart, so there’s no extra step, no extra log-in, and no new system to learn.

Early results: efficiency in action

Between the utilization of Document Services AI workflow and the new Predicted Document Labels for Admin Documents, we’ve already seen measurable efficiency gains:

• 89% reduction in document processing time by using Document Services AI workflows.¹
• 10+ million clicks saved when using Predicted Document Labels for Admin Documents since it became available in July 2025.²

That’s a significant time savings when you consider the hundreds — or even thousands — of documents that flow through a busy practice each week.

By letting AI handle repetitive, low-value labeling work, practices can free up both time and cognitive bandwidth for the tasks that truly require human judgment.

More than saving clicks: real benefits for practices

While the click reduction is easy to measure, the bigger value is in what this automation enables:

• Faster turnaround for patient care – Documents get routed to the right person sooner, so follow-up can happen without delay.
   
• Reduced mental load – Staff no longer have to scan every page to guess its type, freeing their attention for higher-value work.
   
• More accurate categorization – AI can apply the labels automatically but also learns from manual inputs for more consistent categorization, minimizing errors that can slow care or create compliance risks.
   
• Smoother onboarding – Simplified processes make it easier for new team members to ramp up and establish a sense of comfort even if they’re working in a new EHR.
   
• Better prioritization – Suggested labels help surface the most important documents first.
   
• Scalable efficiency – Document volume can grow without adding more manual labor.
   
• Seamless workflow integration – No extra software, no new log-ins — just smarter automation where you already work.

Manual data extraction and labeling take away from contributing to better patient care. Conversely, AI’s ability to rapidly engage with and structure vast amounts of documents and data makes it a critical asset for this kind of repetitive, laborious task.

Why AI-powered predictive labeling matters for healthcare

The administrative burden in healthcare is well-documented and often cited as a leading cause of clinician burnout. But we’re already seeing physicians begin to embrace AI in helping reduce administrative burden — and with good reason.

By letting AI handle repetitive, low-value labeling work, practices can free up both time and cognitive bandwidth for the tasks that truly require human judgment. Over time, this kind of automation doesn’t just save minutes per document, it reshapes daily workflows, creates more predictable processes, and contributes to a smoother patient experience.

Looking ahead: the roadmap for document intelligence

This is only the first step in our plan to transform how practices handle the flood of incoming information. Future releases will extend these capabilities to:

• Clinical documents – Expanding AI labeling to other document types beyond admin faxes. As an example, AI will auto-select referring providers on incoming faxes and add that information directly to referrals.
• Data extraction – Pulling discrete clinical data directly into the patient chart for graphing and analysis, like extracting lab analytes and structuring the data within the chart.
• Document summarization – Generating concise summaries so staff can quickly understand a document before reading it in full. That includes tying hospital discharges and other care events to related documents and data.
• Full-text searchability – Making documents searchable by their extracted clinical and administrative content.
• Automating spam – AI will proactively send junk emails, like promotions, to a spam folder – clinicians will still have the opportunity to view and move messages to the Clinical Inbox as needed.

Soon, these features will help practices not only process documents faster, but also put their contents to work, without adding to the workload. Find out more about how we’re committed to providing smart, adaptable AI innovations that can improve operational functions and help practices scale up.