Honing in on healthcare: Printing trends, document solutions and home working

This heavily regulated industry has faced many challenges during the move to remote working brought on by the global pandemic, such as compliance with HIPAA and other standards. Given the nature of a lot of work in this industry, many employees continued to work from the office and healthcare facilities as their jobs simply cannot be done remotely. However, with the move to becoming more flexible and aligned with other sectors, healthcare services (HS) are looking seriously at talent retention, mental health, wellbeing, and role engagement.

 

The IDC European user survey looks at the printing trends, habits, and preferences of Western European employees working from home. Let’s unpack three of the categories from this survey: printing, workflows, and the Cloud.

This is the only sector where print levels increased during the pandemic, and for obvious reasons. An increase in activity and workers created a greater need to share documents. Survey respondents expect print levels to stay the same. Scoring the highest out of any industry, healthcare has the greatest need to print, but also comes with a very unique set of needs. 73% of those surveyed in Healthcare Services (HS) said that the ability to print is essential to carry out day-to-day work tasks. The report shows that 68% of all HS printing is used internally.

 

Staff rely on central business functions to support the priorities of speed, accuracy, and security. Workers in this industry often need to print time-critical documents and submit print jobs on the go, from any device, and collect wherever they are. Changes in work environments do not change the expected level of security. The HS industry reports that approximately only 17% of all printing takes place at home in a hybrid workplace. According to the survey findings, staff are mostly using personal devices for printing remotely.

 

A print solution tailored to the needs of the healthcare industry is a must. YSoft SAFEQ aids HIPAA, GDPR, and other regulatory compliance through managed, authenticated user access. Password-protected PDF files provide additional security on patient records or hospital administrative reports. Fact-based reports provide an audit trail on all print services activity. The YSoft SAFEQ Epic Connector improves document security without the need to purchase certified printers. On top of this, the pandemic has also led to increased demand for touchless print technology, such as our MFX Mobile Reader and MFX Ultimate Reader.

Long before the pandemic hit, migrating to cloud platforms was already a trend. This trend has seen significant growth, and the survey reported that 54% of respondents working in healthcare services stated this is either very or extremely important to them. Since 2020, 49% of those asked said they have increased their use of Cloud-based tools in this industry. Cloud computing in healthcare services can increase efficiency while decreasing costs. Cloud computing makes tasks, such as sharing medical records, easier and safer.

 

A cloud-based service, such as YSoft SAFEQ Cloud, allows you to print documents such as lab results, reports, images, paperwork, and more, from any device to any printer on your network. Lives are dependent on an efficient, accurate, and connected infrastructure, so printing where and when it is needed can be critical. A mobile, remote, or dispersed workforce needs secure printing to be available, regardless of location. You also need high availability and speed to ensure that your printing processes run as smoothly as possible.

As discussed by HIMSS, automation and workflows can free up resources so healthcare organizations can focus on providing value-based care for patients. So, it comes as no surprise that in the IDC study, most of the healthcare organizations questioned reported the need to automate their workflows across departments. According to 59% of healthcare services (HS) survey respondents, the move towards digital workflows is driven, unsurprisingly, by COVID-19. Just under half of HS respondents said increasing investment in document workflow automation and optimization is either very or extremely important, with 54% increasing investment in this area. Connecting the physical and digital world in a secure way is really helping to boost this sector.

 

Innovation is needed to drive efficiency. We know that HS needs seamless and secure delivery of healthcare documents to patients and caregivers. Our shared or delegated print queues can help to speed up patient care, reduce costs, and increase productivity, accuracy, and compliance. YSoft SAFEQ Workflow Suite offers accurate, secure, and consistent document capture while automated workflows take the complexity out of document scanning, improving the productivity of healthcare staff. Automated Scan Workflows are ideal for saving time on repetitive tasks such as processing patient forms, doctor’s notes, lab and test results, searching for medical records, and dealing with health insurance. Our powerful OCR Engine enables text highlighting or redacting, print job separation, and much more. We even have our MFX Ultimate Reader, the most universal reader on the market,  for touchless sanitary safe and secure access.

The IDC survey shows that HS, as with most other industries, is ready for change and to follow its digital transformation goals. The future of print and scan possibilities in the healthcare industry is exciting. Using the YSoft SAFEQ healthcare solution ensures security and ease of print, copy, scan, and fax in a highly dynamic and pressurized environment using any multifunctional device on the network. The problem-solving connectivity power of SAFEQ Cloud makes it easy and quick to print what is needed and when, while being configurable for high availability, redundancy, and failover.