**Managed Print Service** Healthcare
Case Study | North East London NHS Foundation Trust
London NHS Trust improves healthcare, business agility, productivity and efficiency, cuts print costs by £200k a year
The North East London NHS Foundation Trust has a business strategy to reduce costs and improve operations. But print across its community health centres was costly, inefficient and frustrated staff. Using a Ricoh Managed Print service has enabled the Trust to cut costs, increase operational agility and productivity and help staff focus on delivering healthcare services.
Name
North East London NHS Foundation Trust
Location
London
Size
6,000 staff
Activity
Healthcare
Challenges
Solution
Ricoh Managed Print Service
Benefits
The North East London NHS Foundation Trust (NELFT) provides an extensive range of integrated community and mental health services for around 4.3 million people living in London, Essex, Kent and Medway. The Trust’s 6,000 staff operate out of 210 health centres, clinics and GP surgeries across the region.
NELFT has several key business drivers around financial efficiency and value for money, service quality, staff productivity and agility, and improving capability and capacity as well as digital transformation. One of the key aims for NELFT is enabling services to be delivered out of hospital and in the community.
This is achieved via its 210 in-community locations and mobile working. Despite increasing digitisation and reliance on electronic information there is still a need for clinical staff to access printed documents.
But the existing print infrastructure had several challenges. There were over 2,000 printers, multifunction devices, fax machines and scanners supported in a haphazard way by six different suppliers. Paper and consumables were being wasted because of inefficient printing and electricity and call-out costs were increasing. Staff were being frustrated and hindered by device downtime, waiting for repairs and having to self-manage equipment. All of this was costing NELFT £645,000 a year.
To help meet NELFT’s business objectives, print and document management had to be more efficient and cost effective, support rather than obstruct agile working, and reduce carbon footprint.
Through a public procurement process, NELFT carried out detailed market research to find a print service partner. Ricoh scored highly on its market presence and reputation, product capability and quality and for a comprehensive solution that met all NELFT’s key touchpoints. Ricoh also demonstrated a proven and successful track record with other NHS Trusts. One key reason why Ricoh won the contract was showing how its solution could cut time spent tending printers and increase ‘time to care’. When the solution was deployed, printer-related service calls dropped from 10 percent to two percent.
NELFT has deployed a Ricoh Managed Print Service (MPS) comprising Ricoh Multifunction Products (MFPs), print management software and remote monitoring. The MPS reduces the Trust’s printer fleet by 40 percent to 670 devices distributed across in-community clinics and health centres.
The MPS is managed using Streamline, a single, integrated, content-aware solution that can be configured to automate a wide range of print and document-related operations. It monitors print activity, enables enterprise-wide security control and implements universal policies to help streamline print processes. For instance, user-based authentication across all devices protects confidential information while Follow Me printing gives users the freedom to use any device at any location.
The solution brings data from Streamline and Smart Metering – Ricoh’s remote device monitoring application – and present its via Ricoh Print Insights, a BI platform that pulls together all print and billing data and displays it on a dashboard. This provides a comprehensive and real-time view of print operations across all NELFT locations.
The print service at NELFT is supported by Ricoh, under a five-year lease agreement, by local access to a 500-strong network of highly trained service engineers. The service includes pre-emptive and proactive support, service technician expertise and regular service and account reviews.
Ricoh Solution/Products
Ricoh Multifunction Products
Streamline
Print Insights
Smart Metering
The Ricoh MPS enhances the Trust’s green policies by using fewer, low-carbon devices that use less energy. The Trust estimates it is cutting CO2 emissions by up to 66 percent a year. Reduced print volumes cut paper and toner consumption and there is less waste from unwanted print jobs left on printers. The Trust used improved monitoring to identify and analyse colour use. This led to a ‘Think Before You Print’ campaign with the aim, among other things, of reducing colour print by a third.
To underpin Ricoh’s innovative ‘always current’ print technology, NELFT has now started to upgrade and adapt some of the MFPs to be able to print prescriptions as part of the Trust’s Electronic Prescribing and Medicines Administration rollout.
NELFT is saving around £200,000 a year on print operations through a series of KIPs such as a 10 percent cut in print volume, 40 percent fleet reduction, up to 80 percent cut in fax devices and associated costs and up to 10 percent reduction in scanners.
The MPS has played a critical role in supporting agile working and improving the user experience. Previously, staff had to travel to different sites to print since devices were locally configured and needed new drivers for each new visit. Now staff can print, scan or fax from any Ricoh MFP using Follow Me print.
A specialist from one of the Trust’s Podiatry Services says, “It’s great that we are now able to access printers at any site to print and scan documents. Previously you had to search for and have the printer saved on profile to access it. And it reduces the need for separate scanners to scan documents onto records. These features save time.”
The Ricoh MPS has delivered several key benefits to NELFT covering cost savings, increased productivity and agile working, a cut in fleet size, improved carbon footprint, and better management and control. Importantly, the MPS is a key tool for supporting and improving delivery of healthcare services.
Many people served by NELFT - because of social and health reasons - do not have access to PCs, laptops or even smartphones. Therefore, giving NELFT staff easy and efficient access to printing, copying and scanning is a critical part of patient care. Parents need printed documents as evidence about care needs for schools. Other ways that the MPS is supporting healthcare include scanning paper documents to append to electronic records, printed prescriptions to reduce dispensing errors, documents for court, producing colourful social stories for children; and reproducing patient artwork used in therapy.
Having multiple document services on each Ricoh MFP along with a simple, touch-screen interface has also increased productivity and efficiency. The system integrates with existing Trust applications including SharePoint and gives staff several options such as scan to email, personal and shared files.
Handling confidential documents is more secure since Follow Me print only releases documents to print with a personal swipe card instead of printouts left in trays. This has also cut wastepaper. Intelligent scanning routes documents securely to appropriate individuals and network destinations.
With Streamline and Print Insights, management has a much better view of print activity enabling it to manage and control costs accurately. This has enabled the Trust to introduce best-practice processes and policies like reducing colour and single-side printing. Tools such as Smart Metering, that monitor toner and potential faults, have reduced printer
down time and the burden on IT support. Having a single supplier for the whole service, instead of several, improves efficiency further.
Print service management tools enable the Trust to assess print needs and plan budgets more effectively.
Ricoh is empowering digital workplaces using innovative technologies and services enabling individuals to work smarter. For more than 80 years, Ricoh has been driving innovation and is a leading provider of document management solutions, IT services, communication services, commercial and industrial printing, digital cameras, and industrial systems.
Headquartered in Tokyo, Ricoh Group operates in approximately 200 countries and regions. In the financial year ended March 2020, Ricoh Group had worldwide sales of 19.06 billion USD.
For further information, please visit www.ricoh.co.uk