Melissa Gallippi
Clinic Admin, The Doctor’s Office Toronto
“The transition to Phelix AI has been seamless. What used to take hours of manual effort is now done instantly, and our doctors get patient results without delays.”
Introduction
TDOT Family Health Organization, a well-established family health practice in Toronto, has been delivering comprehensive patient-centered healthcare since 1971. The clinic comprises 13 family physicians and six administrative staff, collectively managing approximately 250 patients daily. Each physician maintains a patient roster ranging from 1,500 to 2,000 individuals. To support their operations, TDOT relies on Accuro EMR and utilizes Unite for faxes. However, the clinic faced significant challenges in handling incoming faxes efficiently.
Challenges
With 13 physicians receiving patient documents daily, TDOT encountered a substantial volume of incoming faxes—approximately 5,500 per month. The issue was particularly pronounced on Monday mornings when staff would return to find 350–400 faxes from over the weekend. This manual process posed several challenges. Each fax took 5–8 minutes to process, involving patient identification, document categorization, and assignment to the correct physician, making it a time-consuming workflow. Due to multitasking responsibilities—including answering phone calls and assisting doctors—admin staff frequently misfiled documents, assigned them to the wrong physician, or categorized them incorrectly, leading to a high error rate. With backlog issues, physicians often received important test results and consultation notes late, causing delayed patient follow-ups and dissatisfaction. Additionally, all six administrative staff were required to handle fax processing, diverting their time from other critical clinic operations, creating resource allocation issues.
Solution & Implementation
TDOT discovered Phelix AI’s automated fax solution through a physician at the clinic who attended a seminar showcasing the product. This led to an internal evaluation, followed by discussions with Phelix AI’s team, who facilitated the transition. The implementation introduced key features that made an immediate impact. Phelix AI’s system uses health card numbers and names to accurately assign faxes to the correct patient and physician, reducing the risk of human error. Instead of manually categorizing each fax, the system identifies document types automatically, ensuring compliance and reducing the risk of administrative staff handling sensitive medical information unnecessarily. Additionally, the Phelix AI team customized document subtypes to fit TDOT’s unique needs, ensuring smooth adoption.
The onboarding process was seamless. Training was led by Phelix AI, and within an hour, the three staff members primarily responsible for fax processing were fully equipped to use the system efficiently.
Conclusion
By implementing Phelix AI, TDOT Family Health Organization has transformed its fax management process from a labor-intensive, error-prone system to an automated, highly efficient workflow. The reduced administrative burden allows staff to focus on higher-value tasks, while physicians can provide timely patient care without delays. The time required to process each fax dropped from 5–8 minutes to a fraction of that, significantly increasing efficiency. Given 1,300 faxes per month, the clinic saved approximately 43 hours per week, resulting in a 91% time savings. Only three staff members now handle faxes, compared to six before, reducing overall workload. Even physicians who are not tech-savvy found the system easy to use and now manage their own faxed documents. Physicians receive test results and consultation notes instantly, allowing for same-day follow-ups and reducing patient wait times.
