Background:
A large California-based healthcare organization operating in many states across the country, with over 167,000 employees, 14,600 doctors, and 431 locations, was struggling with outdated and slow printing processes associated with their Epic EHR system.
Problem:
The slow printing process was causing delays in patient care, leading to staff frustration, and increasing costs related to printing and supporting that environment
Solution:
The healthcare organization decided to implement OM Plus output management software from Plus Technologies. The software streamlined printing processes by improving the efficiency and speed of printing patient records, reducing costs related to printing and maintaining the system, and increasing staff satisfaction and improving patient care.
Implementation:
We worked with the customer to implement our highly available OM Plus output management solution across three data centers servicing nine regions, each with their own instance of Epic EHR, and delivering print out to about 70,000 printers. IT staff batch imported the print queues , defined them once in OM Plus, and propagated them across the network. This saved a significant amount of time compared to defining a print queue for each tray in a printer and then redundantly defining all those queues across many EPS servers.
Results:
The highly available OM Plus solution provided them with a centralized point of administration for managing, monitoring, and delivering print jobs across their complex network. It reduced the number of managed print queues by about 5x, reduced the IT staff workload, fewer printing errors, provided load balancing, automated error recovery, and made the print environment more reliable. With the solution’s high availability capabilities, it reduced print outages due to down servers or printers. which enabled patients to get admitted, cared for, and discharged more efficiently. The customer was able to reduce cost, increase system uptime, realize a quick ROI, and help meet HIPAA compliance with reporting and analysis of print usage.
Conclusion:
By utilizing OM Plus from Plus Technologies, the customer streamlined their print environment operations. Overall, the implementation of OM Plus output management software proved to be a valuable investment helping them to improve the management, speed, and reliability of their print environment which ultimately increased their efficiency and helped improve the patient experience.