Posted by Jordan Pusey
There are a lot of organizations out there running some pretty complex print environments. But if we had to say which sector tended to operate the most intricate print environments alongside incredibly stringent requirements, it would undoubtedly be healthcare. Not only are there a lot of high-pressure situations and moving logistical parts, hospitals, medical facilities and other healthcare organizations also have to ensure strict confidentiality of patient records. That makes the stakes higher in healthcare printer management than in many other industries.
Which is why it’s a shame that healthcare printer management solutions are so lacking. What you often find are Epic or MEDITECH environments—largely because these solutions can ensure HIPAA compliance in print management—in which the actual printer and driver management is sometimes a seat-of-your-pants, crossed-fingers exercise. Once a print environment is set up, it’s almost dangerous to disturb it because the balance is so delicate. Adding new drivers can cause system-wide instability. Adding new printers can inexplicably result in the loss of print functionality for certain users.
In hospital printer management scenarios where Epic is the solution of choice, the process can also be tedious because Epic requires manual intervention on each Epic Print Server (EPS) when changes are made. In dynamic environments like hospitals and medical facilities, this process is incredibly time-consuming and can in fact result in unforeseen problems because it increases the likelihood of human error. The tradeoff for HIPAA compliance in print management, it would seem, is more uncertain and laborious print management.
Organizations like OhioHealth and Princeton Community Hospital thought so too—until they discovered PrinterLogic. Our next-generation enterprise print management solution is ideal for healthcare printer management, including challenging hospital printer management implementations, because it has advanced secure printing features that can help ensure HIPAA compliance in your print management operations while also providing an ease of use that is simply unprecedented in the healthcare sector.
For example, in Epic environments, PrinterLogic completely transforms the print management paradigm for the better. Instead of having to make meticulous individual changes across each EPS, PrinterLogic allows admins to make a single change in its centralized web-based management console, which it then pushes out to every corresponding EPS. It doesn’t matter whether you’re changing a tiny setting on one printer profile or making a batch edit to the whole printer fleet—PrinterLogic saves huge amounts of time and effort, drastically reducing the investment in healthcare printer management across the entire organization.
The same could be said for MEDITECH environments. Like Epic, which has its share of well-known quirks, MEDITECH can’t be assumed to work with just any hospital printer management solution out of the box. Except for PrinterLogic, that is. PrinterLogic’s convenient centralized driver repository and its ability to avoid print-driver conflicts prevents the common driver-related issues from affecting MEDITECH printing. When an IT environment includes diverse hardware and software, PrinterLogic can be the decisive factor in ensuring high print availability and maximum uptime in the print environment. And that’s something that physicians as well as their patients will appreciate. Their lives might even depend on it.
Generally speaking, hospital printer management has a lot of room for improvement, but you can’t entrust your print environment to a healthcare printer management solution that won’t stand up to high-demand, mission-critical applications and the strict security requirements of HIPAA compliance. PrinterLogic has been field-tested in rigorous healthcare implementations that include Epic printing, MEDITECH printing and even more conventional medical print environments (such as Guthrie, the Orthopedic Institute of New Jersey and Laser Spine Institute) where it’s either partially or completely eliminated the need for print servers. As complex and exacting as hospital printer management can be, it can do the same for you.