Anyone who has worked in a hospital setting knows the days and hours are not the traditional Monday through Friday, 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. Hospitals operate seven days a week, 24 hours a day. My first healthcare experience was during nursing school working part-time on the weekend as a unit clerk and nursing assistant. Like most first-year nurses, I worked the 11 p.m. to 7a.m. shift after graduation. I went further in my education and completed an engineering degree. One of my first engineering positions was with the HP Medical Products Group. I was called at all hours to service medical equipment including telemetry and cardiac catheterization devices.
The fact that hospitals operate around the clock means equipment needs to be up and running at all times. Hospitals, even more so than many other businesses, are laser focused on reducing costs and improving efficiencies.
Brant Williams, an HP Managed Print Services Consultant, and I were talking this week about the unique printing needs of healthcare organizations. In addition to the need for after-hours support, the service needs to be proficient and equipped to solve problems quickly. For Brant and HP MPS, that often means sending a technician to take care of a problem within two hours. And 89 percent of the time, the problems are fixed in a single visit.
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The medical center was able to retire 36 copiers and replace them with HP multifunction printers (MFPs) that could print, copy, fax and scan. The standardization on HP MFPs helped reduce costs and support improved employee productivity. Salt Lake Regional Medical Center also added HP Digital Sending 
According to Mark Runyan, director of information services, Salt Lake Regional Medical Center, “We rely and trust HP recommendations to help select devices and solutions to meet our needs. From there, the HP Partner MPS team starts to take care of the devices. They keep the fleet up and running and I don’t have to be involved in the day-to-day support needs.”
What unique requirements do you have in your healthcare organization? Are you knee deep in IT issues or looking to improve efficiencies and reduce costs? Have you had experiences in the past with managed print services that didn’t meet your needs? Tweet me at @LeslieAtHP to share your experiences and ideas.
