Intelligent Document Processing is now available in Documo Workspaces for practices running Jane. Once a workspace admin enables it, every inbound fax is read, classified, split into the individual documents inside it, and arrives with the patient details already pulled off the page. Your team confirms and sends it to the chart in Jane, instead of opening a blank fax and working out what it is.
Every Documo account on a Jane plan includes 100 processed documents at no cost. Additional documents are 25 cents each, and IDP does not process anything until it is switched on.
What actually changed
Documo and Jane have worked together on fax since 2024, and until now the split was clean. Outbound was integrated: you send a fax directly from a patient chart in Jane, including individual chart entries, a date range of entries, or a treatment plan. Inbound was not. Faxes arrived in the Documo portal, and somebody on your team opened each one, worked out which patient it belonged to, split it if it was a packet, and uploaded it to the chart by hand. The Jane guide has a whole page on that upload step, which tells you how normal a part of the day it is.
That second half is what IDP closes. The document still arrives the same way, at the same fax number, from the same referring office. What changes is everything that used to happen after it arrived.
| Before | After IDP is enabled |
|---|---|
| A twelve-page fax lands in the portal as one file. | The packet is split into the individual documents inside it. |
| Someone opens it to find out what it is and who it belongs to. | Each document is classified by type and the patient details are read off the page. |
| Someone searches Jane for the patient and uploads the file to the chart. | The patient details are already on the document. Your team confirms them and sends it to the chart. |
| Nothing records how long any of it took. | Every action is logged in the document history. |
What IDP does, step by step
Four things happen to a document once a workspace has IDP enabled.
- Text recognition. A fax is an image when it arrives, not text. Nothing can be searched, matched or routed until that changes, so the first thing IDP does is convert the page into readable text. This is also why a clean fax from a modern system behaves better than a fifth-generation photocopy sent from a machine in a basement, and it is worth knowing which of your referring offices are which.
- Classification. Each document is assigned a type, with a confidence score attached. The score matters as much as the label. It is what lets your team spot the handful of documents the system was unsure about instead of reviewing all of them.
- Extraction. Patient details are pulled off the page: first, middle and last name, date of birth, zip code, medical record number and encounter date. These are the fields that make a match possible.
- Split detection. Multi-document faxes are separated into their parts, so a referral packet does not sit in the chart as one long file that nobody can find anything in. This is the step people underestimate. A packet filed whole is technically filed and practically lost.
Those extracted details are what makes the filing step possible. Matching a document to the right patient is the hard part of any inbound document workflow, and it is the reason this is not simply a faster upload button.
What this looks like on a Monday morning
A physiotherapy clinic gets a fax at 8:12 a.m. It is nine pages: a referral letter from a family physician, an imaging report, and an insurer authorization for a course of treatment, all sent together because the referring office scanned the file as one stack.
Under the old workflow that fax sits in the portal until someone opens it. They read the first page to find the patient name, search Jane, find the chart, then decide whether to upload all nine pages as one file or split them first. Splitting means saving pages out separately, naming them, and uploading them one at a time. Most people, most mornings, upload the nine pages as one file and move on. The imaging report is now inside a document called something like “Fax 8-12am” and the treating practitioner will not find it without opening the whole thing.
With IDP enabled, the nine pages arrive as three documents, each already labeled with what it is and carrying the patient details read off the page. Someone confirms that the type and the patient are right and sends each one to the chart. It is a check, not an investigation. The practitioner opening the chart before the appointment sees a referral, an imaging report and an authorization, separately, named for what they are.
That is the whole difference, and it is not really about speed. It is about whether the information is findable at the moment somebody needs it.
What actually arrives at a Jane practice
Jane supports more than forty types of health professional, and the inbound document mix looks different from a specialty medical group. A practice running physiotherapy, chiropractic, massage, mental health or naturopathic care is typically receiving:
- Referral letters from family physicians and specialists
- Imaging and diagnostic reports
- Insurer and extended health authorizations, including approvals for a set number of visits
- Motor vehicle accident and workers compensation claim paperwork
- Discharge summaries and post-operative protocols
- Prior records requested from another clinic when a patient transfers
Almost none of it is structured, and much of it arrives mid-treatment rather than at intake. That is what makes the filing step matter: a document that arrives in week three of a treatment plan has to reach the right chart before the next appointment, not eventually.
More room on your team
Alongside IDP, the number of users included with Jane plans went up:
- Basic and Professional: up to 10 users, increased from 3.
- Business: up to 20 users, increased from 10.
This matters more than it looks. Workspaces are shared by design, and the point of a shared document queue is that more than one person can see it. A three-user ceiling meant most practices had a fax queue that only the front desk could reach, which in turn meant every question about a document had to go through the front desk. At ten users, the clinical side can be in there too, and the practitioner who needs the imaging report can go and look at it.
Why the inbound half is the one that costs you
Inbound faxes are the last part of most practices that still runs entirely on people. Our own research found that 52 percent of faxes sent to health systems require staff intervention, and only 29 percent of organizations have automated their fax workflows at all. Jane practices are smaller than the organizations in that sample, but the shape of the problem is the same, and in a small practice the person absorbing it is usually the person who is also answering the phone, checking patients in and rebooking the afternoon.
The work does not show up anywhere. No one bills for it, no report counts it, and it only becomes visible when a document goes to the wrong chart or does not get filed at all. A practice can run this way for years without ever seeing the cost written down, which is exactly why it survives.
How to turn it on
IDP is enabled per workspace, by an owner or an admin. The setup is short:
- Create a workspace, or open the one you already use for inbound documents.
- In workspace settings, turn on the IDP automations for that workspace.
- Assign the inbound fax numbers whose faxes should land there.
- Invite the people who need access, which now includes more of them than it used to.
One thing to know before you assign numbers: a fax number can only belong to one workspace at a time, though a single workspace can hold several fax numbers. So the question to settle first is not which numbers to automate, it is how you want your inbound mail sorted. Most practices end up with fewer workspaces than they expected.
IDP does not process anything before you enable it, so nothing starts counting until you decide it should.
What IDP does not do
It does not file documents into Jane on its own. The reading, classifying, extracting and splitting all happen without anyone touching the document. Confirming the patient and sending it to the chart is a person, on purpose. That step is short, and it is the step that keeps a wrong match from reaching a chart.
It does not fix a bad source document. A fax that is illegible to a person is going to be difficult for text recognition too. Practices with one or two chronically poor-quality referral sources usually find that solving the source is worth more than any setting.
It does not change how you send. Outbound faxing from a Jane chart is untouched.
And the integration is currently available in Canada and the United States only, which is worth knowing if you run locations outside both.
What to watch once it is running
Two things are worth looking at deliberately rather than assuming they are fine.
The confidence scores. Look at which document types come through with low confidence. It is usually one or two specific forms from one or two specific senders, and it usually has a simple explanation, like a form that puts the patient name in a place nothing else does.
The corrections. The documents your team has to fix before sending are the most informative thing in the workspace. If the same referring office keeps producing them, that is a conversation with that office, not a configuration problem.
Questions we are already getting
Does this replace the outbound fax integration in Jane?
No. Sending a fax from a patient chart in Jane works exactly as it did. This adds the inbound half.
What happens if IDP reads something wrong?
You see it before it goes anywhere. The document type and the extracted patient details are shown for confirmation, and the send to Jane happens after that. A misread on a bad fax becomes a correction rather than a document in the wrong chart.
What counts as a processed document?
Each individual document that IDP reads. A fax packet that splits into four documents counts as four. Your account includes 100 at no cost, and additional documents are 25 cents each.
Do we have to use it on every fax number?
No. IDP is enabled per workspace, so you can point one fax number at a workspace with IDP on and leave everything else as it is. Practices trying this for the first time usually start with the number that receives referrals.
Does it work on documents we upload ourselves, not just faxes?
Yes. Anything that lands in a workspace with IDP enabled is processed the same way, including files your team uploads. Scanned mail and documents downloaded from an insurer portal both count.
Who can turn it on?
Workspace owners and admins. Other users can work in the workspace and process documents, but the automation setting is not theirs to change, which is deliberate.
