ElectronicFax

The FHIR R4 ElectronicFax resource is used to represent fax transmission details for sending healthcare-related documents via fax. It supports the transmission of clinical records, prescriptions, referrals, and other important medical documents, ensuring secure and efficient sharing of information between providers.

Health Gorilla exposes ElectronicFax as part of its FHIR R4 API to support secure transmission and tracking of healthcare-related documents via fax workflows.

Use Cases

  • Sending clinical documents via fax to external providers
  • Receiving incoming faxes and linking them to patient records
  • Tracking fax transmission statuses and errors
  • Archiving faxed documents for patient record keeping
  • Integrating faxed documents into EHR workflows

Scope and Behavior

This documentation describes the FHIR R4 API interface for ElectronicFax. Health Gorilla’s platform may use additional internal services and data standards to acquire, normalize, and route information. Only the FHIR R4–exposed behavior is documented here.

The ElectronicFax resource represents a Health Gorilla–specific extension and is not part of the HL7 FHIR R4 core specification.

Behavior, available fields, and supported operations may vary by configuration and enabled products.

Authentication

All requests to the FHIR R4 API require OAuth 2.0 authentication using a bearer token. Unauthorized requests return 401 Unauthorized responses.

Required scopes:

  • electronicfax.read for GET
  • electronicfax.write for POST, PUT, DELETE

For more information, go to: OAuth 2.0 Authentication.

Search Behavior

Searches are scoped to the authenticated tenant. The patient parameter is required for patient-scoped searches and is recommended for most search use cases.

Results are returned as a FHIR Bundle. Pagination may be applied. Use standard FHIR pagination links (Bundle.link) to retrieve additional result pages.

Note: The parameters listed below are not exhaustive and reflect commonly used fields in typical Health Gorilla workflows. Supported parameters and behavior may vary by configuration.

Frequently Used Search Parameters

ParameterDescriptionExample ValuesFHIR Data Type
patientFilters by patientPatient/{id}Reference
statusFilters by fax transmission statusqueued, sent, failedtoken
dateSentFilters by the date the fax was sentge2024-01-01, le2024-12-31date
recipientFilters by recipient of the fax transmissionPractitioner/{id}, Organization/{id}Reference

Commonly Returned Resource Attributes

AttributeDescriptionExample ValuesFHIR Data Type
patientReference to the patient associated with the fax transmissionPatient/{id}Reference(Patient)
statusCurrent status of the fax transmissionsent, failed[code]
dateSentDate the fax was sent2024-02-12T12:34:56ZdateTime
recipientRecipient of the faxPractitioner/{id}, Organization/{id}Reference
documentReferenceReference to the document being transmittedDocumentReference/{id}Reference(DocumentReference)

Notifications

The FHIR R4 API does not provide direct resource-change subscriptions for ElectronicFax. Changes to fax transmission information may surface through broader notification workflows, depending on enabled Health Gorilla products and configuration.

Error Handling

All ElectronicFax operations follow standard Health Gorilla error handling, including use of FHIR OperationOutcome for structured responses. For more information, go to: Error Handling.

Additional Resources

HL7 FHIR ElectronicFax