Comment: The role of multifunctional printers in a paperless NHS

DAVE McNALLY, director of product marketing at Dell Imaging, explains how hospitals can improve patient care and free up time with the use of multifunctional printers

New standards of patient care based on clinical collaboration are intensifying healthcare organisations’ reliance on electronic medical records, fuelled by the need to capture, route and store information. What’s more, organisations are increasingly being challenged to reduce medical errors, cut costs, and boost the productivity of clinical staff so that more time can be spent on quality patient care.

With a greater emphasis on collaboration and electronic patient records, print and document management is now viewed as high-priority, especially in light of the UK health secretary’s recently declared target of achieving a paperless health service by 2018

The result? Greater volumes of patient information – from data to imaging – need to be shared by clinical personnel across a variety of hospital departments. With a greater emphasis on collaboration and electronic patient records, print and document management is now viewed as high-priority, especially in light of the UK health secretary’s recently declared target of achieving a paperless health service by 2018.

But thanks to a new breed of multifunction printers (MFPs), clinical staff now have access to a range of powerful healthcare workflow solutions designed to support and ease their workload. With print, copy, scan, fax, and email capabilities, and inbuilt document management software, the process of storing and retrieving documents digitally is now easier than ever before, and is drastically cutting back on the need for paper output.

MFPs offer a wealth of benefits, including:

• Movement of medical documents in seconds Every day, medical records need to follow patients from one department to another. Rather than have to physically move these documents around, which is time-consuming, an MFP enables medical staff to quickly and easily update patient records by scanning them and automatically routing updates to the patient records system. This means faster access for all departments to the new information and that the patient will be dealt with much quicker
• Security of confidential documents Ensuring confidential documents are not misplaced and stay in the right hands is a key priority for hospitals. MFPs for hospitals have a number of design features to secure documents, often with a standard out-of-the-box pincode access system, meaning that hospital staff can print to a mail box. Their printing will not be released until they have entered their pincode into the printer and confidential information won’t be left unattended on a printer, as a document won’t be printed until retrieved using a pin code. MFPs can also be set up with physical locks

Discharging patients can be accelerated with MFPs since prescription orders can be securely routed from the nurse station directly to the pharmacy, drastically cutting patient waiting times

• Elimination of outdated forms In any healthcare organisation, having lots of forms lying around is problematic. Not only is it a waste of money and resources, forms can also become quickly outdated with employees ending up using the wrong ones. Everyday documents that require continual updating can be directly stored onto an MFP, ensuring fast, on-demand to the current form for printing
• Help unburden medical staff Printer pooling applications mean that hospital staff can access documents from any printer on the network, meaning the document can ‘follow’ them wherever they go. ‘Follow me’ printing saves staff having to carry around documents and prevents unauthorised personnel from picking up their documents since documents will not physically print without an access code or ID card. It’s secure and cuts down on paper usage, since jobs are automatically deleted if not collected within a certain time frame
• Direct to the Pharmacy Discharging patients can be accelerated with MFPs since prescription orders can be securely routed from the nurse station directly to the pharmacy, drastically cutting patient waiting times
• Mobile to paper Networked MFP models are increasingly compatible with mobile print solutions. Staff in healthcare organisations are using tablets and other mobile devices as a viable alternative to paper documentation. It could well be a step in the right direction for paperless healthcare, but there will always be occasions when healthcare staff will need to print documents, and so will benefit from mobile printing. MFPs help enable the best of both worlds with seamless options to go ‘mobile to paper’

It could well be a step in the right direction for paperless healthcare, but there will always be occasions when healthcare staff will need to print documents, and so will benefit from mobile printing

As healthcare organisations look to improve patient care and free up the time of clinical staff, MFPs provide an effective way to manage print and document control. So, whether it’s printing, scanning, copying or fax capabilities, the features offered by today’s generation of multifunctional printers promise to help mobilise today’s busy healthcare organisations looking for enhanced collaboration, as well as faster, smoother operations.