It starts with something simple: a printout that is never picked up. It could be a patient record, a discharge summary, or a treatment plan. In a healthcare setting, where patient data privacy is paramount, an unattended piece of paper on a paper tray could become a significant security risk.
And yet, as hospitals and clinics undergo digital transformation, print is still an unfortunate blind spot in many organizations’ security and compliance strategies. In the face of tightening regulations, evolving care models, and a rise in remote work, there has never been a greater need to build auditability and control into everyday workflows – all while keeping patient care moving.
The hidden risks of print
The most obvious risk when it comes to print is data breaches. While this might conjure up images of external hackers, the most practical types of data breaches tend to be inadvertent and internal. IT teams can implement firewalls and access controls against external agents, but printed pages left unattended, misdirected print jobs, and lack of user authentication at the printer are all common weak points that can put patient trust and safety on the line. And as compliance requirements grow increasingly complicated under frameworks like HIPAA and GDPR, small risks can lead to reputational and monetary liabilities.
Another issue is workflow friction and fragmentation. The pandemic accelerated the decentralization of healthcare, the rise of mobile workforces, and the adoption of cloud-first solutions – all of which have added complexity to hospital IT infrastructure. It’s not uncommon to see large healthcare organizations grappling with competing priorities from different departments, multiple electronic health record (EHR) systems, and legacy print solutions that can’t keep up with the demands of a busy workplace.
Even if they’re aware that improvements need to be made, it’s incredibly difficult to implement fixes without downtime that disrupts patient care — effectively they’re building the car while they’re driving it. As an enormous healthcare organization, you can’t just pull everything apart and start from scratch.
What optimized print infrastructure looks like
So instead of trying to completely reimagine printing, I see the push to modernize healthcare systems opening a window for addressing print infrastructure. Even when print isn’t the driver of major infrastructure projects, it’s almost always involved. Every time an organization adjusts a system, plays with workflows, does an integration, there’s an opportunity to ask how they can improve print in this piece of the puzzle.
For example, we’re currently working with a prominent academic medical center in the US, who is shifting their infrastructure to private cloud. While print wasn’t the focus, it became essential to user authentication and an unbroken audit trail. In another large healthcare company switching to Chrome OS, they found that their existing print vendor didn’t support basic workflow needs.
But what would a truly compliant print infrastructure include? While the focus is always on prioritizing care, you still need to inch your tech stack forward with efficiency, security, and redundancy as core pillars. Authentication is a really important part of this, ensuring print jobs can only be released by the authorized user. It should be baked into every step: there are software and hardware layers that require users to authenticate before accessing any application.
But the key ingredient is auditability; tracking who printed what, where, and when. It is the one low-effort, high-impact change that can make a huge difference when it comes to improving compliance. With detailed audit trails, IT teams can spot issues, trace data flows, and address risks — making compliance not just easier, but smarter.
Getting compliance and clinicians on the same page
Ultimately, any technology in a healthcare setting is there to help frontline workers do their job – prioritizing clinicians’ workflows, not adding friction. Of course, the reality is that organizations must also meet compliance requirements to make sure their patients are protected, so it’s about getting the balance right.
To this end, I recommend focusing first on usability: delivering a consistent printing experience, regardless of which endpoint the user is exposed to. The other non-negotiable is interoperability, ensuring print management software integrates with other systems. Clinicians can still use their normal applications to provide care, while a print management solution is working hard behind the scenes to enable that without impacting the user’s experience.
Take a workstation on wheels, for example. It’s something you take for granted when you go into a hospital. But the complexity behind providing that mobility is immense; it involves enabling user switching while ensuring accurate and precise access control, authentication, tracking and auditing. And this all has to happen seamlessly so the user doesn’t even notice; it’s not holding up their workflow while they’re signing in and out of various applications.
So, when we design our solutions, we’re looking at the world that clinicians work in and the particular tasks they’re trying to perform. We don’t want to get in the way of that; what we’re doing is building software that will live and breathe with them. Good software doesn’t interrupt the workflow – it supports it.
Print as the common denominator
Print may not be the most exciting part of a healthcare tech stack. But because it is a commonality across all departments – everyone needs to print something at some stage – print management actually becomes a way to coordinate the bigger picture. Knowing that print is the end point to your workflow means you can build backwards, using print as a lens to evaluate security and compliance across your entire organization.
The auditability that print management systems provide is critical to meeting compliance and regulatory requirements. Put simply, if you’re in the dark, you can’t trace what’s happened along the chain. With a clear audit trail, you can start putting in place policies and systems to drive the continuous improvement of your entire ecosystem, but it begins and ends with print.
About Matt Buttrey
Mat spends many of his working hours listening to healthcare partners and customers around the world. This approach is driven by his pursuit of technical excellence in print management software for the healthcare industry. Mat set up PaperCut Software’s dedicated healthcare team in 2019 and continues to champion the innovation around printing, scanning, and faxing within the healthcare world.
