Doctors, nurses and support staff at busy healthcare facilities want to spend as much time as they can caring for patients, so distractions caused by IT equipment that’s not fit for purpose can be hugely frustrating.
That was the challenge facing the small IT team at a medical practice in Mablethorpe, Lincolnshire.
The practice operates across two buildings, employs five GPs, eight practice nurses and a team of healthcare assistants providing hundreds of appointments to patients every day. Its printer fleet consists of machines in each consultation room as well as further units in reception and office spaces. They are used to print prescriptions, notices, office documentation and receipts for non-NHS services.
The printers were showing their age, with frequent breakdowns, poor technical support provision and rising costs for consumables.
A more reliable and efficient solution
The practice’s team was managing the fleet itself, ordering its own supplies of toner and using technical support from a third-party provider.
They decided to transition to a managed print service (MPS) agreement with Brother, which saw a new fleet of 58 printers installed across the practice.
Most of the devices are robust HL-L5100DNT mono laser printers, designed to provide reliable and economical high-volume print performance, but the deal also included four HL-L9310CDW colour laser units.
Fit for purpose
The medical practice has achieved significant cost and time savings by upgrading to new, more reliable printers across the practice, both in terms of staff time and financially. Not only has the rate of technical issues decreased to almost zero, but the high-capacity toners and automated supplies mean the team is also spending much less time managing the printer fleet.
Under the MPS agreement, every aspect of printer management is taken care of, from supplies re-ordering and machine condition monitoring to billing and rapid-response tech-support.
But the IT team also has full visibility should they need it – using the Brother Online portal, they can now monitor the printers remotely in order to track print volumes and identify any over or under-used devices.
“Since day one, the new printers have worked flawlessly. They are seamlessly integrated with our digital patient records system making it very intuitive to print wherever you are in the building and supplies turn up clearly labelled for each printer as and when they’re needed.
“The amount of time our people now spend interacting with the printers has been cut dramatically and they are no longer the source of frustration that the previous solution was. They’re also backed up by excellent technical support, so any issues that do occur we’re confident they’ll be resolved quickly.” says the IT Administrator at Medical practice.
Find out more about Brother’s solutions for primary healthcare.
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