New Signed fax intake — referrals land structured, automatically Flat pricing from $150/mo — unlimited providers BAA included at every tier 68% of leaked referrals die at intake — ours don't Month-to-month — no contract, no setup fee

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An honest comparison

Four ways to run intake. One of them is ours.

We sell one of these, so read this as a partisan document — but a checkable one. Here is what each approach does well, what it costs, and when you should choose something other than us.

At a glance

How the market usually works.

What you are comparing The usual market pattern Refer
Pricing Enterprise platforms are quote-only; where prices are published, paid tiers often still say "contact sales". $150 / $300 / $600 printed on the pricing page
Billing unit Per physician per month — commonly $99 to $149, billed annually. Flat per practice, unlimited staff logins
Fax handling Often metered — cents per page received, more per page machine-read — or capped at a monthly document allowance. Signed fax intake included, no per-page charge
Which side it serves Most tools are built for the sender — the practice making referrals — or split focus across CRM, scheduling and call-centre products. Receiver-first: the queue belongs to the practice being referred to
Closing the loop Usually requires the referring practice to join the same network and log in to see status. Printable status letters — the referrer needs no account
Status tracking Custom statuses are flexible, which also means a referral can be moved anywhere by anyone. Five enforced states; illegal jumps refused, terminal states frozen
Aging alerts Often part of a paid analytics tier rather than the base product. 48-hour aging alerts standard on every tier
BAA Compliance badges are common; an explicit "BAA included" rarely appears on the marketing page. Signed in the signup flow at every tier
Onboarding Enterprise sales cycle, then an implementation project with a named project manager. Self-serve; point your fax line at the endpoint and start

These are general patterns across referral-management vendors rather than any single company's current terms, which change and are usually negotiated. Verify the specifics with whoever you are evaluating — particularly what happens to referrals arriving by fax, and whether your referring practices have to sign up to see status.

Pick the right one

When each option is the correct answer.

The fax pile and a spreadsheet

  • Free, familiar, and nobody needs training
  • Works while one person holds the whole process in their head
  • No way to answer "what happened to the one I sent Tuesday?"

Right for you if your referral volume is low enough that nothing is ever waiting, and one person can reliably tell you the status of anything a referrer asks about.

A referral network

  • Genuinely excellent when both practices are already on it
  • Structured referrals with no fax in the middle
  • Value depends entirely on your referrers joining too

Right for you if the practices that refer to you are already on the same network — or will realistically join. If most of them still fax, the network solves the easy half of your intake.

An enterprise care-coordination platform

  • Deep EHR integration and health-system-grade reporting
  • Built to coordinate care across many organisations at once
  • Priced and implemented for organisations with a project team

Right for you if you are a health system or a large group with an implementation team and a budget cycle. A ten-person specialist clinic will spend more on the project than on the software.

Refer

  • Assumes your referrers still fax, and works anyway
  • Flat price, unlimited staff, no per-page meter
  • An enforced workflow, so the aging report can be believed

Right for you if you are the practice receiving referrals, most of them still arrive by fax or portal, and you want to close the loop without asking every referrer to adopt software.

The question worth asking

"What happens to a referral that arrives by fax?"

Ask every vendor on your shortlist. The answers separate them quickly: some meter it per page, some cap the number of documents per month, some assume the referral was never a fax in the first place. Research consistently finds that a large share of referrals never close the loop — and intake is where that starts.

Referral-leakage figures cited across this site come from published industry research rather than our own customer data.

What we do with that fax

Arrives via signed APIVerified, not just accepted
Cost per pageNone
Unknown senderProvider auto-created
Enters workflow atReceived — aging clock starts
Referrer hears back viaPrinted status letter

Still deciding?

If a network or an enterprise platform fits your situation better, we would rather say so now than onboard you into the wrong tool.