LetterAgent
Mail physical letters by just asking your AI assistant.
Home > Guides > Patient portal faxing
No, not directly. A patient portal is a website or app that takes uploads, not incoming faxes, so there is no fax number to dial for the portal itself. If a clinic asks you to fax something, the fax goes to the office's fax machine or fax service, and staff then attach it to your record in the portal.
The confusion is understandable. Clinics still say "fax it to us" in the same breath as "check your portal," and both feel like the same system. They are not. The portal is the front door you log into. The fax line is a separate channel that lands in the office, where a person or a fax service receives it and files it. Once you picture two different inboxes, the instructions clinics give start to make sense.
A portal account is tied to you by login, not by a phone number. A fax, by contrast, is addressed only by a number, with no login attached. A portal cannot verify who sent a fax from the number alone, so it does not accept them. That is also why a fax to a clinic usually needs your full name, date of birth, and a short cover note: the office has to match an anonymous arrival to the right chart by hand.
Some clinics run an online fax service behind the scenes, which can make it look as if the fax went "into the portal." What actually happened is that the fax arrived in the clinic's fax inbox, and staff or software moved it into your record. The portal itself never picked up the call.
It goes to the fax number the clinic publishes for that department, and different departments often have different numbers. A billing office, a records office, and a specialist's nurse line may each run their own line. Sending a lab result to the general office number instead of the records number is the most common reason a fax sits unread: it arrived fine, but in the wrong pile.
Ask for the exact number and the name of the person or team who should receive it. Write both on your cover page. If the clinic gives you a choice between fax and portal upload, pick the upload when the document is already a file on your phone or computer. It lands in your record without a human middleman, and you usually get a receipt in the portal right away.
| Route | Where it lands | Best for |
|---|---|---|
| Portal upload | Directly in your record | Files you already have as scans or photos |
| Fax to the office | The clinic's fax inbox, then your chart | Paper forms, or when the clinic asks for a fax by name |
| Paper mail | The clinic's mail room | Originals a clinic insists on holding in paper |
First, confirm the number and ask whether a portal upload would work instead. Many offices say "fax" out of habit and will accept an upload when you ask. If they truly need a fax, send it to the department number, include a cover page with your name, date of birth, and what the document is, and keep the confirmation page. Then call or message through the portal a day or two later and ask whether it was filed. A fax confirmation page proves the transmission went through; it does not prove anyone filed it.
One more detail worth knowing: faxed pages arrive in black and white, and fine print, light pencil, and color highlights often wash out. If a form has small boxes or faint handwriting, darken it before you send it, and check that every page went through. A missing last page is a classic fax failure, because the sender rarely notices it.
In Canada, the same split applies: provincial health portals and clinic portals take uploads, while faxing still runs through the clinic's own fax line. In the US, federal privacy rules treat fax as an accepted way to share health information, which is one reason clinics still use it even though patients mostly live in portals now. The technology is old; the habit survives because every clinic already has a fax number and every insurer and specialist accepts one.
LetterAgent's fax service is currently available in testing for US and Canadian fax numbers, with no inbound faxes. You describe the fax to your AI assistant, approve the exact quoted total, and pay once through Stripe. Because fax is still in testing, activation is in progress, so treat it as a testing service rather than a same-day guarantee.
Ready to fax it? Fax with LetterAgent: describe it to your AI assistant, approve the exact quoted price, and it is sent.
LetterAgent is a working name. Prices include print, postage, and our service fee. US prices in USD, Canadian prices in CAD (Canadian prices exclude applicable sales tax, added at checkout). Currently in private testing.
Need help? Ask your assistant: it can check a job's status any time. If it ever can't handle something: hello@getletteragent.com