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OutSmart Guide

Sending and Receiving Faxes

OutSmart has a built-in fax module that lets you send and receive faxes without leaving the EMR. Outgoing faxes are sent from the Documents Module; incoming faxes arrive automatically into the same place, labelled and ready to file.

You need an active fax module subscription to send faxes. Receiving faxes also requires a fax account — either a new number set up through OutSmart or your existing fax number transferred to the OutSmart fax system. Contact us at contact.outsmartemr.com to set up or transfer a fax number.

Shared Fax Accounts

A single fax account can be shared by everyone at the clinic. The account is owned by one practitioner, but other practitioners and admin staff can send and receive faxes using it. This keeps the clinic on one number while still tracking who sent each fax.

  • Practitioners who are using another practitioner’s fax account see only the faxes they themselves sent.
  • The fax-account owner sees every fax sent through their account, by anyone at the clinic.
  • Office admins see every fax sent from the office.

See Fax History for what each role can see in the history view.

The Address Book

The Address Book holds the fax contacts you can pick from when sending a fax. The list combines two scopes:

  • Personal contacts are fax contacts a practitioner added under their own practitioner account. They live in the Contacts section of the address book. Only the practitioner who added a personal contact can edit or delete it.
  • Office-wide contacts are fax contacts an admin added under an admin account. They live in the Organization section of the address book. Any admin at the office can edit or delete them. Practitioners cannot.

Everyone at the office can select any contact (personal or office-wide) when sending a fax. The restriction is only on editing and deleting, and it follows who created the contact.

To add a new fax contact, open the Address Book dropdown and use the add-contact option. The contact saves under whichever account you’re currently signed in as. A practitioner adds it as a personal contact; an admin adds it as an office-wide contact. The address book is also shared with the Patient Correspondence tool, so any contact you add here is available there too.

Sending a Fax

  1. Open the Documents Module by clicking the Documents icon in the top menu bar. The Documents panel slides down.
  2. Find the document or documents you want to fax in the documents list.
  3. Select them. Click anywhere in a row (on a blank area, not the file name) to select a single document. To select multiple documents, click and drag, or hold Ctrl and click each one.
  4. Click Send Fax in the documents toolbar. The Fax panel slides down.
  5. In the Fax panel:
    • Choose the fax account to send from (you’ll only see accounts you have permission to use).
    • Choose a recipient — pick one from the Address Book dropdown or type a 10-digit fax number directly.
    • Optionally, attach a patient so the fax is associated with that patient’s record. The patient appears in the Fax History next to the fax.
    • Optionally, write a cover letter — the cover letter accompanies the fax as the first page.
  6. Preview each attached file using the preview links if you want to check the document before it goes. Previews work for images, PDFs, and plain text.
  7. Click Send Fax.

The fax is queued and sent. You can check the status in Fax History.

Cover Page Behavior

Faxes go out with a branded cover page that includes your clinic’s logo, name, address, phone, fax, and email — followed by the cover letter you typed.

  • For document faxes, the branded cover page is always included as the first page.
  • For prescription rx-sheet faxes sent from the prescription print view, the branded cover page is optional — the rx sheet already carries the clinic header, so a second cover page is usually unnecessary. The cover-page option appears as a checkbox on the prescription fax modal.

Receiving a Fax

OutSmart checks for incoming faxes every five minutes. When a fax arrives, it lands automatically in the Documents Module with two labels applied: fax and unread.

To see new incoming faxes:

  1. Open the Documents Module by clicking the Documents icon in the top menu bar.
  2. In the documents toolbar, click Check For Faxes. The view filters to documents labelled fax and unread.

You don’t need to click Check For Faxes to receive the faxes — they’re already in the system from the automatic five-minute fetch. The button is just a fast way to see what’s new.

Once you’ve reviewed an incoming fax, you can remove the unread label, change its labels, associate it with a patient, or share it with team members the same way you would any other document.

Transferring an Existing Fax Number to OutSmart

If you already have a fax number elsewhere, you can transfer it to OutSmart so all faxes start coming through the EMR. Contact us at contact.outsmartemr.com to start a transfer — they will let you know the current paperwork, fees, and timeline.

Troubleshooting

I can pick a fax contact when sending, but I can’t find it in the address book to edit it

The contact was added by an admin, so it lives in the Organization section of the address book and only an admin can edit or delete it. Practitioners can select office-wide contacts when sending a fax, but they can’t see them under their own Contacts section because those contacts don’t belong to a specific practitioner.

To update the contact’s name, fax number, or phone number, either:

  • Ask an admin at the office to make the change, or
  • Sign in under an admin account and edit the contact from the Organization section yourself.

The reverse case works the same way. A personal contact a practitioner added is only editable by that practitioner. If an admin can pick it for sending but can’t edit it, the practitioner who added it has to make the change.

The wrong fax number is showing on my outgoing fax cover page

The clinic-branded cover page pulls its contact details (name, phone, fax, address, email) from the Office Profile, so if the wrong fax number is showing, update it there:

  1. Click Office in the main navigation menu.
  2. On the Office Profile page, edit the Fax number field.
  3. Save.

The change flows to every place the fax number is displayed, including the cover page on future outgoing faxes. Faxes already sent are not re-generated. See Editing Your Office Profile for the full list of fields on that page.