Managed Print Services in Healthcare
Summary: When Doc is in the hospital the last thing I want is for my paperwork to get lost or not be up-to-date. The combination of a good MPS program and an EHR strategy seems like a great way to reduce mistakes and save lives.
If you’re looking for a very document-heavy business, you need look no further than the healthcare industry, especially hospitals. Doc was not surprised to read a good article on the benefits of Managed Print Services at hospitals published over on the Becker Hospital Review site.
It’s a lengthy article which talks a lot about Electronic Health Records (EHR) and how MPS can help with the implementation of such programs. Here’s a tease:
Managed Print Services is no longer a buzz phrase or a short-term trend in healthcare. The reality is that hospitals today are spending an even higher portion of their annual budgets on printing and document handling — an estimated 9 percent, according to the National Health Service in 2010 — and are faced with a swelling array of printers, scanners and multi-function devices, over-burdened staff, reactive decision-making and inefficient workflow processes that adversely affect the quality of health care provided to patients.
Enterprising hospital executives, including Chief Executive Officers, Chief Financial Officers, Chief Technology Officers, Chief Operating Officers and Chief Information Officers across America are seeking best practices and change management techniques to be more accountable and transparent to their boards, stakeholders and the public, and they are turning to MPS as one of the few remaining areas where they can capture considerable savings — upwards of 30 percent — and efficiencies to improve workflow processes, as well as employee and patient satisfaction, all while making the transition to electronic health records less costly and painful.
The question today is not if your hospital should implement MPS, but how best to implement MPS in order to over-achieve desired results. Creating fundamental, sustainable transformation in workflow processes requires a comprehensive change in a hospital’s operations and culture, and the right continuous improvement management philosophy and methodology to achieve standardization and desired results. How do you ensure those who serve, i.e. your hospital staff that are on the frontline of health care service delivery, will embrace your MPS program? Subsequently, does your MPS program have all the key elements to be sustainable and deliver a return on investment?
With the right partner and program in place, hospitals can implement effective change management and help their staff better handle the enormous amount of pressure to cut costs, improve workflow processes, evolve to EHR and deliver better outcomes.
When Doc is in the hospital the last thing I want is for my paperwork to get lost or not be up-to-date. The combination of a good MPS program and an EHR strategy seems like a great way to reduce mistakes and save lives.
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ZDNet introduces Doc (The DocuMentor), sponsored by RICOH. Through his blog, Doc will educate you about Document Management. So who is Doc? Doc is something of an enigma. He was born to a Russian ballerina and a German electrical engineer who some believe was running covert operations for shadowy corporate interests. Doc grew up in various locations in the United States, although no one seems to know precisely where, least of all Doc. His early schooling was unremarkable except for the time he was caught trying to replace all the mimeograph machines with high-tech color copiers that had mysteriously disappeared from a shipment to Albania. At MIT, he made a name for himself by transforming a large printer into a robot that hunts and eats Roombas. Professionally, he reportedly has seen the insides of more brands, versions, and generations of printer and printer-related hardware than almost anyone. Some say his obsession with paper, printing, and mechanical movement was either started by, or evidenced by, a traumatic childhood episode when he crawled inside an old Xerox 2400 and tried to print himself.
Anyway, Doc has hands on experience with stuff like printer maintenance and fleet management, but his mastery of document management leaves no stone unturned. Important issues like sustainability, security, and regulatory compliance are top of mind for Doc, as are other business technology needs like networking and IT services, making him a true blue IT renaissance man.
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