Enhanced Efficiencies Control Cost
Located in West Orange, New Jersey and serving more than two million patients every year, The Saint Barnabas Health Care System (SBHCS) is comprised of 7 hospitals and is the second largest employer in the State of New Jersey. SBHCS has over 20,000 employees delivering quality patient care to their local communities, neighbors and friends, and anyone who needs their superb medical services provided throughout the state. Similar to other hospitals and hospital systems throughout the country, SBHCS depends on the production of printed documents to perform its daily operations of sharing information, adhering to regulatory compliance matters and supporting the needs of nearly 5,000 practicing physicians.
Facing an annual 9% increase in print volume, and with a fragmented process of equipment use, multiple equipment vendors and no central management or strategy to control spend, SBHCS realized that it could no longer waste resources and staff time. It needed expertise to gain control of costs and find solutions to manage its print services infrastructure. That’s when SBHCS turned to AUXILIO for help.
When the SBHCS supply chain executives began to focus on the print management situation at their facilities, they quickly realized some glaring issues including; a monthly print production volume of over 18,590,300 documents, a lack of multi-function device (MFD) connectivity (7%), the proliferation of unnecessary equipment and multiple service contracts with multiple vendors throughout the system. The supply chain team at SBHCS realized they had a major problem and, it quickly became apparent they needed a clear and concise managed print strategy. Auxilio’s experts knew they could help.
Once on site, the AUXILIO Assessment Team worked across the health system with an eye toward uncovering wasted resources, time and inefficiencies. The goal was to bring visibility to the unknown and integrate a streamlined print strategy that would guarantee process improvements and minimize costs. Recapturing every penny that could then be redirected back into quality patient care was the priority. Our Assessment Team of experts collaborated with the hospital staff on each unit of measure and took the following action steps to execute a customized print strategy:
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Deployed five AUXILIO experts on-site at each individual hospital in the system to perform a comprehensive desktop analysis of: current costs, vendor and supply contracts and agreements, staff use of equipment and lay-out, inventory of software for clinical departments, business office applications and print strategy expectations.
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Performed a thorough financial review and cost benefit analysis of the print process across the health system, in clinical areas as well as business office environments. This financial review was comprehensive audits of every category of expenditure of the production of documents including all spend related to labor, equipment, service and supplies looking back three years.
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Created a non-intrusive environment for one-on-one staff interviews with system employees at all levels across each individual hospital.
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Collaborated with management on designing a print strategy and developed a centralized cost center with full transparent outcomes and accountability for costs, productivity, efficiencies and structures in total alignment with the health system’s strategy, goals and objectives.
The challenges were met with solutions through the execution of the AUXILIO managed print services performance and savings model. In the first 3 years, SBHCS reduced its print volume by 11%, raised the copier connectivity to 87% and saved the hospital system over $3M dollars. With the experienced AUXILIO on-site Center of Excellence professional print strategy consultants, who seamlessly integrated into the hospital environment, caregivers soon realized that “one call does it all” when they rang the help desk for print support services. Our available 24/7 delivery of service is a value add that means SBHCS staff are ensured of service anytime of the day or night.
As the only vendor independent managed print services company in the world that exclusively works within the health care industry, AUXILIO consolidated a fragmented process, managed equipment vendors to deliver for the hospital, and took control of hundreds of invoices by establishing one invoice for service, labor, supplies, and equipment.
For the first time in the history of Saint Barnabas Health Care System, the staff has full transparency of costs and print volumes, a clear picture of future savings, improved productivity of its print processes and the peace of mind just knowing that AUXILIO is on their team and there to help!