Since the advent of computers, we’ve had the impression that we would move to a paperless environment. In healthcare, the recent investment of massive amounts of dollars, time, and effort have increased that expectation and promised a more meaningful use of computerized systems and more secure and private processing of the data. Have we achieved the nirvana we were promised? Have we implemented the technology? Are we using less paper? Is the data more secure, confidential and protected?
Let’s start by looking at how healthcare organizations have adopted electronic medical records. In 2016, more than 95 percent of all eligible and critical access hospitals, 60 percent of all U.S. office-based physicians, over 20 percent of nurse practitioners, and 2 percent of physician assistants have demonstrated meaningful use of certified health IT, according to Health IT Dashboard. So, we can safely say that we have indeed implemented this technology, and the supporting infrastructure.
It’s good to see that so many in our industry have taken the steps necessary to comply with and achieve the meaningful use of certified health IT, but this level of adoption came at a steep price. The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) has allocated a whopping $34.69 billion in meaningful use incentive payments — and that doesn’t even account for all the money those providers spent on purchasing and implementing the required technology to qualify for the incentives, a June 2016 blog post by Healthcare Informatics noted. Well, at least with the rate of adoption and the amount of money spent on these initiatives, print volumes are on the decline and we are much closer to the secure, confidential, and paperless environment we all dreamed of, right?
Not so fast. According to a blog post by Logicalis, “Experts say hospitals are seeing as much as an 11 percent increase in their annual print volumes driven by the Meaningful Use program, the Affordable Care Act, ICD-10, and the adoption of electronic record-keeping (EMR/EHR) methodologies.” This volume can go down over time with a concentration on optimization of the EMR and a disciplined approach to reducing volume, but there are few cases of that. Still, the number of print devices in healthcare must be down, right?
Take a walk around the hospital and you tell me. How many printers do you see? How many copiers and fax machines (yes, healthcare is one of the only industries still using fax machines) are there? How many of these devices are not only located near each other but how many are right next to each other? Not only have print devices not decreased but in most facilities, they have increased or continually been refreshed with brand new devices regardless of age and ability. Still not sure if your print volume has decreased after your major investment in technology? Take a look at how many shredding containers are in your facility and what you pay per month. For that matter, what are you paying in new offsite document storage per month?
Let’s take a moment to review. A significant part of the healthcare industry has adopted certified health IT. Second, we have spent a ton of money doing that and yet print volume is up and the number of devices has not significantly declined. Whew! We must be more secure, right?
A Deep-dive Into Specialty Pharma
A specialty drug is a class of prescription medications used to treat complex, chronic or rare medical conditions. Although this classification was originally intended to define the treatment of rare, also termed “orphan” diseases, affecting fewer than 200,000 people in the US, more recently, specialty drugs have emerged as the cornerstone of treatment for chronic and complex diseases such as cancer, autoimmune conditions, diabetes, hepatitis C, and HIV/AIDS.
While a tremendous amount of time, effort, and money has been invested in securing our environment, we have seen a significant increase in the frequency of healthcare breaches. According to Breach Report 2016: Protected Health Information (PHI), 81 percent of breached records last year came from hacking attacks, and there was a total of 335 large-scale personal health information (PHI) data breaches compromising 16,612,985 individual patient records. We clearly have to increase our efforts to secure data and start reducing the number of breaches.
So, while we have spent a lot on technology and security and we have adopted a significant amount of automation, we are still heavily dependent upon printers and the printed page. This trend is likely not to change in the near future and requires us to take additional steps to look at spending, usage and security of the fleet. Here are some initial steps hospital leaders can take in that endeavor:
Know what you are printing and what you are spending.
If you don’t already have visibility into your spend and utilization, get it. Ignorance is not an excuse. There are plenty of software and services available today and you need to know what is happening if you have any chance of changing it.
Optimize your investment.
I’m sure if each of you looked in the software cupboard we call a data center, you’ll find a treasure trove of automation solutions that will allow you to reduce your reliance on the printed page and, therefore, on the printer itself. Imagine if you could maintain that digital data throughout your workflows!
Secure your environment.
Let’s face it — printers aren’t going away anytime soon, so why not make sure they are secure? Manage printers just like all of your other endpoint devices and secure them. Assess them, identify the risk, and remediate! Don’t just look at the devices that are on the network or that IT has responsibility for, and remember these devices can store data.
If you must print, make sure it is confidential.
In this era of so many available tools there is no room for the “page left on the printer” scenario. Too many times we ignore the fact that a page left on a device is a potential privacy violation and that more printers equate to yet another endpoint with costs and a need to secure.
Photo: Mutlu Kurtbas/Getty Images
