Dr. Micheal Lenertz, DPM, PA operates a private podiatry practice in Paris, Texas, covering a vast geographic area from Oklahoma to Dallas. Serving 4,000 active patients, the practice handles a high volume of foot and wound care, especially for diabetic patients. The practice is supported by a five-person team, including Hope Hughes, the Medical Billing Manager, Quality Officer, and MIPS Specialist.

After transitioning to a new Electronic Medical Records (EMR) system in 2020, Dr. Lenertz’s practice faced significant inefficiencies in handling fax communications. Incoming faxes arrived in TIFF format, requiring manual conversion to PDF before being uploaded to the EMR. Outgoing faxes needed to be printed, faxed manually, and then shredded. This laborious process resulted in substantial time wasted on repetitive tasks, creating a bottleneck in managing the high volume of paperwork, orders, and lab requests. With approximately 29 referrals daily and recurring Medicare billing every 62 days, the team struggled to maintain efficiency and timely patient service.

Hope Hughes described the issue: “If we got a fax it would come through in TIFF format which we had to convert to PDF to read. To get it into the system we manually download it, switch it, then re-upload and label it.”

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To address these inefficiencies, the practice adopted Medsender, an integrated, HIPAA-compliant faxing, email, and forms solution. After a brief trial, Hughes and the team immediately recognized Medsender as the solution to their faxing challenges. Medsender facilitated seamless integration with the EMR system, automatically converting incoming faxes to PDF and allowing them to be directly uploaded with intelligent labeling. This eliminated the need for manual conversion and handling, significantly streamlining the faxing process.

Hughes recalls, “We set up a trial, and we instantly knew it was what we needed. I think it took us half a day to decide.”

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