Fax isn’t going away—but it doesn’t have to slow down prior authorization

Even in 2025, fax remains one of the most common ways providers submit prior authorizations. The AMA reports that 45% of all PA requests are still submitted by fax, with even higher rates for high-cost inpatient authorizations.

For providers, fax means:

• Lost or illegible documents
• Multiple re-submissions when fields are missing
• Hours of staff time chasing approvals
• Delays in treatment that frustrate both clinicians and patients

For health plans, fax represents inefficiency, inconsistency, and limited visibility. Yet because of rural technology gaps, workflow inertia, and payer requirements, fax isn’t going away anytime soon.

Fax as part of a smarter intake strategy

At Cohere Health, we don’t treat fax as a standalone workflow but as one channel within a broader intake strategy. Our goal is to meet providers where they are today, while steadily guiding them toward digital and automated pathways.

That’s why Cohere supports omnichannel intake (fax, EMR, portal, phone, etc.) so every provider has a pathway that fits their needs, without disrupting care. Fax intake automation is one part of that strategy, helping reduce frustration while creating consistency for health plans.

How fax intake automation works

Cohere makes fax smarter, faster, and more reliable by embedding automation into the intake process:

• Digitizes both structured and handwritten fields, so faxes become usable, structured data.
• Pre-populates up to 95% of intake fields, cutting down on manual re-entry.
• AI-assisted case creation and document attachment push faxed information directly into workflows.‍
• Seamless routing and feedback loops identify incomplete or out-of-scope faxes immediately.

For providers, it means less paperwork and fewer resubmissions. For health plans, it means greater accuracy, auditability, and efficiency.

Benefits for both providers and plans

Fax intake automation, as part of Cohere’s broader intake ecosystem, is already driving measurable impact* at scale:

• 50%+ reduction in fax intake administrative costs
• 20–25% faster decision turnaround
• Up to 50% reduction in manual processing steps
• Improved data quality, with up to 99% accuracy on pre-populated fields

To put that into context: 

• At 35% automation, a client processing 55,000 faxes per month saved more than 800 FTE hours.
• Just a few months later, at 40% automation and 60,000 faxes per month, the same client saved over 1,100 hours in a single month.

As automation rates continue to rise, so do the time and cost savings—freeing providers from repetitive work and giving health plans scalable efficiency gains.

A bridge to the future of intake

By modernizing fax today, health plans can relieve providers of one of their biggest administrative burdens, build trust by respecting existing workflows, and guide gradual adoption of portals and EMR systems without disruption. 

‍Fax may not disappear soon, but it doesn’t have to slow care. With Cohere’s comprehensive intake strategy, fax automation streamlines workflows, accelerates access to care, and lays the groundwork for a future where intake is entirely digital, touchless, and effortless. 

When combined with automated intake and decisioning, the impact compounds—enabling faster, more consistent prior authorizations and getting patients the care they need without delay. What starts as a bridge for fax becomes a cornerstone of end-to-end automation.

Learn more about how Cohere helps health plans and providers modernize intake without disruption.

Want to dive deeper into how the technology works under the hood? Read our technical blog on Cohere Health’s fax intake automation models.

^{*Based on Cohere Health 2025 data}