**Managed Print Service** Healthcare
Case Study | Bedford Hospital
Bedford Hospital ensures clinicians get vital healthcare documents with Ricoh managed service.
At Bedford Hospital, it is vital that doctors and nurses can produce critical documents like blood test and diagnosis reports. But this was threatened by an aging, costly and inefficient print operation, so the hospital deployed a Ricoh Managed Print Service. It has reduced costs by 40 percent, transformed print management and ensures clinicians get the documents needed to deliver the best healthcare to patients.
Name
Bedford Hospital
Location
Bedford, Bedfordshire
Size
2,800 staff
Activity
Healthcare
Challenges
Critical healthcare documents threatened by aging, inefficient print service
Management time and costs wasted on multiple, mix and match products and brands
Print service incompatible with digital transformation strategy
Solution
Ricoh Managed Service
Ricoh Office & Production Print Service
Benefits
Ensures critical care results get to the right person at the right time
Delivers 40% cut in annual print costs
Advances digital transformation, staff productivity, operational efficiency
Bedford Hospital, part of Bedfordshire Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, is a 400-bed general district hospital serving Bedford town and the surrounding area.
The hospital has a strategy to expand the use of digital technology to maintain and improve healthcare quality and efficiency of its operations. It had looked at several areas for operational improvement such as print and document handling. This is essential to producing critical healthcare information for clinicians. The hospital wanted to make the service more efficient and cost effective as well as improve sustainability by rationalising the device fleet and central print room operations.
The existing fleet had developed over several years with different departments and functions buying and managing their own equipment.
As a result, there was a mix and match of different product brands, models and capabilities ranging from modern multifunction devices to standalone desktop printers and photocopiers.
At one point the hospital had 500 different devices. Bedford Hospital had to manage different suppliers for photocopiers, faxes and print devices. Volume printing was managed and run in-house.
The first step was a comprehensive audit of the existing print equipment and hospital needs to design a solution that rationalised devices, increased efficiency and enabled better management. That led to the Trust implementing a Ricoh Managed Service to handle print at Bedford Hospital. This includes a Ricoh Managed and Production Print Service comprising a fleet of 250 Ricoh Multifunction Products (MFPs) and a production print facility with Ricoh digital presses. Print management software provides centralised management and control of print activity.
The Ricoh MFPs are distributed around the site in administration offices, but also in clinical areas such as on each ward and near operating theatres.
Morgan says, “We’ve got Ricoh MFPs across all clinical areas. In A&E, for instance, it is vital that doctors and nurses can print out things like blood test results, drug schedules and referral letters. The service and support is exceptional and I’m not just saying that, it really is fantastic. Ricoh is a very professional, well run, focussed company which provides a first-class service.”
The production print facility – staffed and run by Ricoh employees – handles high-volume and complex print jobs. These can range from clinical documents, like forms for observations and collecting test results, to patient information leaflets and full-colour, corporate documents like board reports.
Ricoh Solution/Products
Ricoh Office and Production Print Service
Equitrac – print management software
Ricoh Multifunction Products
Ricoh production presses
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There are further cost savings from having a single supplier for the whole service because it minimises administration overhead and reduces invoices and paperwork.
“The managed print service provided by Ricoh is an integral part of what we do at the Bedford Hospital. It’s extremely important that we have a provider like Ricoh which can be responsive and enable us to work as efficiently as possible to deliver first-class patient care,” says Morgan.
Steve Morgan, Director of Support Services at Bedfordshire Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust says, “The way we managed print was expensive, inflexible and unsustainable. We had several standalone photocopiers and most people had desktop printers which could only be used if you’re sitting at a connected PC. What we wanted to do is bring print management into the 21st century.”
Through an NHS purchasing framework, the Trust put out a tender to improve print services. After analysing several leading providers, the final choice was between Ricoh
and another leading brand. Morgan says several factors meant Ricoh was awarded the contract including its experience within the health and local government sectors. He says, “The company is a household name and is renowned for quality; a bit like buying a BMW. At the presentation, Ricoh showed it understood our needs, engaged with us and weren’t just out to sell us a product. It also brought in both the sales and operational teams which doesn’t often happen. It established confidence that we would get the best solution.”
Ricoh manages the entire service which includes monthly performance analysis, remote device diagnostics to anticipate faults before they cause downtime and automated consumable resupply. This is backed up by a four-hour, on-site breakdown support service.
The service includes helping the hospital’s internal marketing team improve delivery and impact of print service messages around efficiency and sustainability. One poster, for example, picked up on Morgan’s support for Chelsea FC, by highlighting that wastepaper across the hospital laid end to end could amount to the length of three football pitches.
A hospital is unique in its demand on print services. There are standard office printing requirements, but clinicians also rely on print to help them deliver essential, first-class, front-of-patient healthcare. The Ricoh solution is helping the Trust modernise, advance digital transformation and improve staff productivity.
“In a hospital, printing is often critical to high quality patient care for things like producing test results or scanning and sending a diagnosis for second opinion,” says Morgan. “Those things are very important and the support from Ricoh to ensure printers are up and running is second to none. In local government a delayed bill isn’t too much of a problem. But in a hospital, critical care results not getting to the right person at the right time is a showstopper.”
The hospital has also seen significant cost savings with annual print costs reduced by up to 40 percent. It has cut the print device fleet by over 50 percent. But rather than limiting capacity, the new service has increased efficiency, improved productivity and introduced several features and processes to streamline work. For example, Follow Me print means staff are no longer restricted to using a printer connected to a PC and can print their documents from any Ricoh MFP across the hospital campus using a personal code.
The service has given the hospital much greater control over how print resources are used. The print management system monitors the volume and type of printing by each Ricoh MFP.
It also enables the hospital to set several print policies, like mono and duplex print as default, to reduce volume of paper and print resources used. Monthly reports provide a detailed picture of how print resources are being used across volume, paper and toner consumption and reducing environmental impact.
The central print facility cuts costs further by reducing outsourced printing and handling high-volume print jobs which are expensive to run on office devices.
Morgan says, “Before, people were doing things like printing out letters with the blue NHS logo which costs three times more than mono. By removing that, we are making economies of scale while duplex printing reduces paper use and helps save the environment.”
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