Healthcare organizations are facing increasing pressure and challenges both from long-standing sources as well as significant new and even more dangerous ones.
These can take the form of increased pressure on traditional revenue, the need to move to new or different care delivery models, and even the ever-present need to be more efficient and cost effective. Add on to these challenges the rapidly evolving security landscape that threatens both the financials and reputation of a healthcare organization and it is quite clear why todays healthcare leaders should be concerned.
The pressure the healthcare industry is feeling is in the news every single day. Healthcare organizations are feeling the pressure when it comes to revenue and new and different approaches will be necessary to address this. Recent publications have reported on these issues including a September 2017 article in Becker’s Hospital Review, “4 financial, strategic and revenue cycle issues health systems are facing”, as well as others like the November 2017 article in Forbes, “Why Major Hospitals are Losing Money by the Millions”.
As if this wasn’t enough to keep any CEO or CFO up at night, there are new and even more significant threats that are no longer just on the horizon, but at and in the castle walls today. Security has increased in the level of attention senior healthcare leaders are paying to it and that attention needs to increase even more. Every day it seems there is another story in the news of a healthcare organization that has experienced a data breach and the financial implications are just the tip of the iceberg. Just look at some of the more recent events such as those listed in Healthcare IT News “The biggest healthcare data breaches of 2018 (so far)” and you will see the methods of attack we have come to hear daily: ransomware, phishing, malware, third -party vendor error, etc., etc., etc.
No wonder our executives are worried (and should be)! Pressure from the left, pressure from the right, pressure, pressure, pressure.
Organizations are tackling these issues in a variety of ways and most of them are the traditional ones such as cost cutting, purchased services review, Information Security programs, hardening the data center, firewalls, virus scan, education and training, and a long list of other standard and tried methods that have shown good value. But they are not enough and in some cases, not every solution works for every organization. This can be evidenced by looking at one “traditional” approach but evaluating how a different, more unique approach, can provide multiple benefits if done correctly. Managed Print Services.
You read that correctly. I am proposing that Managed Print Services (MPS), when done correctly, can provide a healthcare organization with strategies to effectively tackle several of the challenges listed above. But the first things we need to realize is that not all MPS programs are the same nor should they be and secondly, MPS in healthcare must be unique as the need or challenge is unique.
Let’s start with defining Managed Print Services. Traditionally, MPS meant pretty much what it said, it was a program to manage the print within an organization with the focus on managing. A healthcare organization would engage usually with a manufacturer to negotiate the lowest price they could get on a per unit basis for print devices (usually copiers) and with that would come a service and supply rate billed on a per page utilization method. Services would be provided on a dispatch model usually Monday – Friday from 9-5 with a two to four-hour response time. Desk side printers would be provided and supported through the client Information Technology department and, bingo, you had an MPS program. Not bad, some savings, service that didn’t reflect your business and maybe an organization would revisit this contract in 5 years’ time with another RFP for equipment.
You would think this is enough but this is never going to solve the issues your organization is facing today and in the future. This cookie cutter approach allows the service provider to be able to sell this service across multiple verticals and assumes that you will continue to purchase more devices even with promises that printing volume would go down especially once Electronic Health Records became the norm.
Well, let’s pull this apart for a few minutes.
Healthcare is a 24/7, 365 days a year business and print is still a critical component of both business and clinical workflows. Would it surprise you that healthcare has seen an average 11% increase in print volume post-EHR implementation according to an article by Logicalis? Or that the average 1,100 bed health system prints over 8 million pages per month with an estimated cost of $3,800,000 per year? So, the promises of print reduction do not seem to have materialized and that is largely because these programs were never built to achieve that benefit. Is there any other cost within your organization that could increase by an average of 11% and you wouldn’t try a different approach to reducing it than you have in the past?
Healthcare organizations need to look at print in the same way they look at other functions of their business and, first and foremost, choose a partner that knows their business. Understand the incentives of your partner and whether they are in the business of selling devices or driving optimization and volume reduction. A true partner is one who is aligned to drive you the value you need and the first value of any MPS program is savings. Savings, true savings, is only going to come from volume reduction. Print less pages, spend less money -- it is that simple. Your MPS program should be built on actionable data and automation to understand what is causing your output and bringing forward recommendations on how to reduce that volume. Less pages means less device so incentive is critical.
The next item that healthcare executives need to keep in mind when thinking about their MPS partner is the alignment with your business. If you are 24/7 and are treating patients 365 days a year, why have a service provider available to you Monday – Friday 9 to 5? How much of your revenue is dependent on a printed or faxed page being produced or, even more so, how many clinical workflows still rely on paper to deliver care? Why should a clinician have to wait 2 to 4 hours or maybe even a full weekend to get service? Pick a partner that understands the criticality of your business needs.
A new and probably the most significant requirement for MPS providers in healthcare is security. The effort of the past years to increase the security of healthcare organizations has absorbed millions of dollars and still we see breaches daily. Printers have been the forgotten frontier in most security plans as demonstrated by the increase in incidents where printers are the vulnerability bad actors exploited. Take for instance the report by of an internal network scan of a major healthcare organization that showed hundreds of devices, especially printers, open to the Internet. Or the 16-year-old that hacked over 100,000 printers just to show he could. Or the “ethical hacker” who forced thousands of printers to print Nazi propaganda as an example. These devices are a risk, they are being utilized to penetrate organizations, they are everywhere in our organizations, and the very disjointed MPS programs we put in place to manage them are part of the problem – no singular ownership and everyone thinks someone else is responsible.
Healthcare needs an MPS program that understands the unique security needs of our industry. If done correctly, this MPS approach can decrease an organization’s threat risk while driving cost savings and operational efficiency. How? Volume. If your MPS program is focused on driving down volume, all of this is achievable. Less volume equals less devices, less devices means less costs, less devices means less security risk (estimates are that one printer has over 250 potential configurable components each with its own vulnerability). Equally as important, less volume means less paper-based breaches and this is important since according to the Office for Civil Rights, 21% of all reportable breaches impacting 500 or more individuals were the result of paper.
Healthcare is a unique business with unique challenges, unique needs and requires unique approaches. Don’t just assume that all programs are and need to be created equally. Look for a partner that understands your business, is aligned with the right incentives, has the expertise, experience and knowledge to achieve your goals and most importantly is a partner in the truest sense of the word.