I don't think it is that ridiculous really. Assuming that the policy to require a signature from the patient stands, fax seems like a pretty natural choice for sending a paper form. Alternatively, they could take the time to scan the form then email it.
Ideally, both you and I would probably prefer something completely digital (both forms and health records). Towards that goal, I think the biggest problem would be interoperability. Someone like Kaiser could (and maybe they do) use all digital things between themselves, because they can enforce a uniform software platform.
One nice thing that I've seen about some digital medical record systems is that they print out nice reports. That is a good fallback system, so that you can still fax or email simple documents around.