Not All AI is Built the Same

The fax machine is humming again. A new order just came through—pages slightly skewed, some text cut off, clinician signature faint but maybe usable. Your intake team does what they always do: Open the fax, scan for patient info, try to decipher what equipment is being ordered, and figure out whether this is something you can even act on today.

Sound familiar? For most HME providers, this case isn’t an outlier. It’s the norm.

Over the last few years, a wave of "AI-powered intake" solutions have promised to modernize the intake process. And to be fair, some progress has been made. Faxes get digitized. Data gets extracted. PDFs become searchable.

But for many intake teams, the day-to-day reality isn’t all that different. Because while the format of the work has changed, the work itself hasn’t gone away.

When AI Stops at Digitization

In today’s market, "AI" can mean a lot of different things.

Many tools focus on digitizing faxed orders—pulling key fields into a system so intake teams don’t have to retype everything by hand. That’s helpful, but it’s also where most solutions stop.

When AI is limited to read-only extraction, intake teams still have to manually review every order, identify documentation gaps, and follow up with clinicians to close those gaps. The work doesn’t disappear. It just shifts to your staff tracking what’s on hold, what’s usable, and what has to be completely redone.

At lower volumes, these limitations are frustrating. At higher volumes, they become a serious operational cost.

As order intake grows, unqualified orders pile up. Documentation requests get delayed or lost. And revenue stalls as orders sit in limbo. This is the ceiling of AI point solutions. It can tell you what’s on the page, but not what to do next.

And in a world where speed, compliance, and cash flow are tightly connected, that gap matters.

Why Parachute's AI Intake Is Different

Parachute approaches AI-enabled intake from a fundamentally different place.

Instead of treating fax digitization as the finish line, Parachute treats it as the starting point.

Parachute’s AI Intake doesn’t just convert faxed orders into digital files; it converts them into digital orders that are ready to act on. That means applying qualification logic, not just extracting data.

From the moment an order enters the platform, intake teams can see what’s usable, what’s missing, whether the order meets qualification requirements, and what action is needed next. Intake stops being a scavenger hunt and becomes a managed workflow.

Of course, not every order arrives complete. That’s the reality. The difference is what happens after the gap is identified.

When documentation is missing, Parachute enables HME providers to request what they need directly in the platform—no separate systems, no manual tracking, no guessing whether someone followed up.

As new documentation comes in, qualification updates automatically. The order progresses without restarting the process or reworking the same file multiple times.

The result? Parachute can handle 100% of inbound orders—whether they arrive by fax or ePrescribing—through a single, unified workflow.

No more parallel processes. No more "this order came in through that channel, so we handle it differently." One platform, one way of working.

Clarity for Intake Teams, Not Just Data

At its core, Parachute’s AI Intake is about clarity. It gives intake teams a clear understanding of which orders are actionable, which ones are on hold (and why), what documentation is still outstanding, and what next steps need to be taken. All in one place.

This clarity reduces rework, shortens intake cycles, and helps teams spend less time managing exceptions—and more time moving orders forward.

Fax-based intake isn’t going away. But managing it doesn’t have to mean accepting inefficiency as the status quo.

AI that simply digitizes faxes may make things look more modern. But AI that actually handles intake workflows goes beyond superficial and into operational.

For HME providers looking to scale without burning out their teams or delaying revenue, this difference is critical to success.

Want to see first-hand how Parachute’s AI Intake works?