Video Transcript, Feb. 2006
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On this video, Fraser Health Associates talk about their experience with HP’s Total Print Management solution. The following is
a video transcript featuring:
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Brent Eriksson, Director, Information Technology Services
Fraser Health Authority |
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Debi Katnich, Manager User Technology, Information Technology
Services Fraser Health Authority |
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Judy Newman, Administrative Director of Lab Services Fraser
Health Authority |
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Andy Karmody, Coordinator, User Technology Services Fraser
Health Authority |
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Laurel Shears, RN, Patient Care Coordinator, Cardiology Stepdown
Unit Burnaby Hospital |
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Karen Young, Unit Clerk, Cardiology Stepdown Unit Burnaby
Hospital |
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Anne Reynolds, Director of Human Resource Consulting Fraser
Health Authority |
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Fraser Health Authority is one of the largest integrated health
delivery systems in North America. It's responsible for healthcare
for one third of the population of the province of British Columbia.
It's also responsible for residential care facilities, home support,
public health and 12 major acute care centers in the Fraser Valley
Region.
We use printing for a wide range of applications such as standard
business functions like email and financial reporting. We also use
it in patient areas to print off registration forms and patient
records.
As much as we talk about having an electronic health record available,
we are still very print dependent. Any kind of lab results, operative
reports and physiotherapy reports are all printed documents and
do have to remain part of a patient's chart.
Our lab results are very critical to patient care. In some of our
larger lab sites in Fraser Health, we can produce about 40,000 test
results in a month and this translates into hundreds of reports
that would need to be printed. It's very important that our results
get delivered quickly and expediently.
Fraser Health was created by an act of the provincial government
in late 2001 and it brought together the three health authorities
that formerly served the Fraser Valley. When the three came together
we had to basically start from scratch and build an infrastructure.
We had to send teams out and actually do the physical inventory
of every print device that we had in every facility across the authority.
Aging, mixed fleet, impossible to support
We have roughly 128 models of printers from a variety of vendors.
Numbers of devices that we couldn't even find documentation for,
we couldn't find drivers for them. No one knew anything about them.
It was impossible to support the users. There were complaints every
single day about print.
Unbalanced printer-to-person ratio
When we started to look at people to printer ratios, we had departments
that had a 2 to 1 ratio and then we had a department just down the
hall that had a 30 to 1 ratio.
Difficulty providing supplies
We had questions, like:
How do you stock consumables your supplies?
How do you know what to stock?
How does a unit clerk know that this particular printer takes this
brand of an ink cartridge and this one is a different one?
We knew that having a number of personal desktop printers of every
type of vintage was not financially efficient and it was a huge
support load on a very limited number of support staff.
We just simply could not manage this kind of mixed environment
and that's where we contacted HP, engaged them and said 'we need
you guys to come to the table and help us out here.'
The philosophy in our request for proposal was very much a zero touch mentality where the equipment would be deployed, installed and refreshed by an external partner. The vendor that we chose was Hewlett-Packard.
Our deployment consisted of 1200 new laser printers and we deployed 170 MFPs
(Multi-function printers).
Balanced deployment helps make the best use of limited resources.
We can look at the workflow and the needs with the department, then
allocate a limited number of printers and determine where they're
going to be more efficiently used.
Right sized printer fleet
Prior to our refresh, our ratio was roughly 1 printer to 2 people.
After refresh it was 1 to 10, which was a vast improvement.
In our labs, our staff is very happy with the HP printers. They
find that they're very reliable. They're quick.
"Within my job, as a Patient Care Coordinator, I use a printer
regularly because you're talking about massive paper being generated
on 20 patients on a daily basis," said Laurel Shears, RN, Cardiology
Stepdown Unit Burnaby Hospital
"Now prior to this machine, I would have to run around the
hospital and find a photocopy machine. That was such a waste of
time, so frustrating," said Karen Young, Unit Clerk, Cardiology
Stepdown Unit Burnaby Hospital. "Our new HP Printer really
expedited our job."
New printers and MFPs with added functionality
It's easy to use and offers copying, scanning and faxing. They get
good support when things go wrong and that's what we strive for.
It makes my job so much easier because I know I'm the one who uses
it the most.
More cost effective and efficient supplies
The supplies have actually been streamlined. You can actually order
toner cartridges ahead of time. For example, at a nurse's unit,
we order that toner cartridge and have it delivered to the nursing
ward before that cartridge runs out.
Ability to monitor printer fleet
We use WebJet Admin to provide reporting to our users and to provide
central support to all our printer fleet. When the toner is low,
we tell the users. When there's a paper jam, we tell the users.
That is time saved - and time saved is faster patient care.
It's a valuable tool for us. It's invaluable.
One of the things we were very interested in is digital send software. Something
that could be utilized in our very paper driven areas. It allows
us to send documents instantaneously which means that an accurate
document gets immediately to a client.
Everybody's knocking on our doors and when they want something,
they want it yesterday.
Document workflow strategies
We will be looking to do an authority wide deployment in the near
future.
Standardized print infrastructure
"With the printer refresh, we're saving approximately $750,000
annually and any bit of funding we can free up is something that
can be reused for other purposes," said Brent Eriksson, Director,
Information Technology Services Fraser Health Authority.
So if there's anything that you can do in a clinical care environment
that gets your caregiver back to delivering care to a patient and
not having to worry about the technology that supports them in giving
that care, it's one less thing for a caregiver to worry about.
The focus on healthcare should be delivering care to our patients
and people that are delivering care to patients want information
in a very quick and timely manner. It is not about technology for
the sake of technology it is how do we support our caregivers?
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