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HEALTHCARE

PaperCut’s Mobility Print solved the biggest problem for one of Australia’s biggest hospital operators

Health care workers

Cutting to the chase

Problem

Visiting doctors needed to be able to connect to printers quickly and reliably.


Solution

PaperCut MF made it easy for anyone to print what they needed.


Outcome

Dependable printing, better reporting, and improved security for users.

Healthe Care Australia (HCA) is the third-largest private hospital operator in the country. Established in 2005, Healthe Care Australia has grown to over 30 hospitals and healthcare facilities, mainly along Australia’s Eastern seaboard. Combined, HCA’s locations house more than 2,500 beds and 70 operating theatres, with a workforce of 7,500 nurses and administrative employees.

Aaron Stent is HCA’s Chief Information Officer and has been with the company for most of its existence. He explains that the company runs two data centers to take care of the needs of all the different hospitals. “We have a dedicated CEO at each of our hospitals, and each hospital has its own cost center which is managed with a high degree of autonomy. This can create some challenges as our IT solutions are highly standardized and have tight security controls. Having a proven reliable print solution circumvents the need for bespoke solutions at each of our hospitals.”

“PaperCut seems to be always developing new features, they have a large market share and aren’t overly expensive. From my experience, I’d recommend PaperCut to anybody!”"

- Aaran Stent,

Chief Information Officer, Healthe Care Australi

Problem

Healthe Care Australia had a specific printing need they needed to answer. Most of the doctors – also known as Visiting Medical Officers (VMOs) – were not employed by the hospitals they were working in. They would be using the hospital facilities temporarily – from just a day up to a couple of weeks.

As Aaran explains, the system they had was unwieldy and prone to issues. “The challenge was that the doctors were not using our workstations, they were required to do off-network printing. They would come to our hospital, use their laptop on our guest Wi-Fi networks and print to unmanaged local inkjet printers.

“This approach wasn’t viable. It was expensive and unreliable – the drivers wouldn’t work; the ink would run out quickly, and printers would jam. It was not a good option for a larger scale operation with remote IT support. Our visiting medical officers would say, ‘Why can’t I use that printer over there?’ We’d reply, ‘Well, that’s on our corporate network and you’re on the guest WiFi.’

“We tried to move our doctors onto managed printers, but they were unable to do the necessary page reads, which meant our corporate staff then couldn’t use the printers. We couldn’t really find a good viable solution. Additionally, medical printing of images, like for the tracking of gastroscopy, required a high-quality colored printer.”

Aaran went looking for a solution.

Solution

“I had a catch-up with other private hospital CIOs at a forum and I heard about how they were deploying PaperCut with what was then the preferred option, Google Cloud Print,” Aaran reveals. “The feedback was really positive, so I looked into it.

“My investigations showed that the price was reasonable, it was made and supported in Australia, and had a good uptake in schools. The website was professional, the support looked comprehensive, and it was based in English as a first language location. During my dealings with the sales team, I found PaperCut were open and transparent about their products and services.

“I liked the culture of the company – and still do!” Where PaperCut really came into its own for HCA, was its Mobility Print feature. “Time is money for these doctors. They don’t want to spend 15 minutes trying to troubleshoot a printer or changing the ink. We needed a solution that worked the first time, every time. If they were experiencing an issue, they wanted it fixed immediately, which is difficult when we have over 30 facilities in diverse geographical locations,” explains Aaran.

Mobility Print made it a simple process to onboard a visiting doctor:

• PaperCut was linked to rollout of new WiFi process for VMOs

• SMS link to the password for WiFi

• Follow instructions for print onboarding

• Immediately see printers close to their location

“We have a clear mobile printing solution. It’s reliable, simple and effective for us to be able to provide managed printers to people that are on our guest WiFi network. They can print on any of our 700 printers and by default access the local printers on the network,” says Aaran.

Outcome

In addition to solving mobile printing, PaperCut has offered HCA several other benefits.

“Now printing can be audited. If someone prints 1,000 garage sale flyers, I can go back to them and say, ‘Stop that!’ declares Aaran.

What’s more, PaperCut offers the benefits of greater security and privacy for potentially sensitive health information. “Security threats like malware attacks are a constant issue in healthcare. Given the nature of our industry, we have a lot of printers sitting right beside people so they can reach out and grab sensitive documents,” reveals Aaran.

And he has plans to utilize more of the features that PaperCut offers. “We do want to get smarter with PaperCut - do you need to do that in colour? Reporting back to business on costs i.e. $200 on colour and $50 on black & white? We now have the tools with PaperCut and will deploy them in time as resources become available.”

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