You can use your fax machine to send SF-12 or SF-36 questionnaires to a computer for scoring, and receiving the scores back within five minutes. You have the option of sending them to our computer or setting up FaxOutComes on your computer. This is an ideal way to implement the use of medical outcome measurement questionnaires from outlying sites and, at the same time, create a centralized data collection point! These faxable questionnaires can be formatted for individual sites, so that the computer would know which faxes were from the ‘oncology clinic’ or from the ‘cardiac clinic’.

1. Using our computer as a processing point for SF-12, SF-36 and MORE medical outcome questionnaires

If you are interested in ‘testing’ the use of the SF-12 or SF-36 medical outcome questionnaires in outpatient clinics; if you are involved in a short term research project and do not want to spend thousands of dollars on computers and scanners; or simply want to implement these questionnaires on a wide scale at low initial cost, then our FaxOutComes service is the answer! You simply fax to our computer a completed SF-12 or SF-36 questionnaire that is scanned, scored, and the scores sent back to the originating fax machine within five minutes. We can set up a "service bureau" with this option and send you a disk on a weekly basis with your data on it.

The cost of this option depends upon the volume of anticipated fax’s, and can also be customized to aggregate the data from your facility, or from various clinics, for later data analysis. There is no limit to the number of calls we can accept per hour, and the return faxes can list scores in numerical or graphical form.

2. Creating a ‘central processing’ point for data collection on your computer

We could set up a central processing point for collecting patient assessment forms, or for scoring the SF-12 or SF-36 which would receive these forms or questionnaires by fax machine. The central processing computer would scan and score and send the scores or patient information back to the sender within five minutes, and keep any scores in databases for you at the central processing computer. The system could be set up so that patient assessment forms and SF-36 questionnaires from an Orthopedic Clinic would have their data stored in a separate database from patient assessment forms and SF-36 questionnaires received from a Cardiac Clinic. With respect to standardized tools such as the SF-12 and SF-36, over time you could create 'normative databases' from these various locations from which you could compare one score to a population of scores. This is a very powerful feature, since over time you would create a level of predictability of complications, unnecessary hospitalizations, and other high-cost and high-risk outcomes.

The cost of this system would depend greatly on the activity volume, the number of different databases created, and the number of reports generated from these databases. The base system has a limit of 40-60 calls per hour, and return faxes list scores in numerical form.