June 03, 2024

Saber Healthcare Group Customer Story

Vasion Team

Saber Healthcare Group provides consulting services to 125 long-term nursing facilities, a smaller number of assisted living centers, and physical therapy providers. Headquartered near Cleveland, Ohio, Saber operates across the eastern United States. Since 2014, the company has experienced sixfold growth, significantly increasing the complexity of its print environment.

The Challenges Saber Healthcare Faced

Saber’s main challenges were related to disparate systems, a lack of support for Cloud Print, and securing protected health information (PHI).

Unifying Print Environments

The medical staff at Saber’s facilities requires continuous access to printing. However, ensuring uninterrupted print services in newly acquired locations was challenging for the small IT team based in Cleveland. They had to navigate unfamiliar devices, and users’ mobility further complicated the printer deployment process.

Managing Print for Chromebooks

In 2019, Saber began a large-scale rollout of Chromebooks to their physical therapists. This led to two problems:

Saber managed Chromebooks separately within the Google Cloud Print console, which increased the workload on Saber’s streamlined IT team, and added another print environment just as they worked to consolidate and standardize their systems.
The second challenge emerged later when Google announced the discontinuation of Cloud Print, creating uncertainty for Saber and raising concerns about whether it was prudent to maintain its Chromebook deployment simultaneously.

Maintaining Strict PHI Regulations

The healthcare industry operates under strict PHI regulations. When printing, doctors, nurses, and administrative staff must handle sensitive patient data with the highest level of security. This makes features like Secure Release Printing essential, as they require user authentication to ensure that the individual who initiated the print job is the one retrieving it.

However, Secure Release Printing isn’t always user-friendly and can be challenging to implement consistently across an organization—especially one as large, distributed, and dynamic as Saber’s.

Vasion’s Solution to Saber Healthcare’s Problems

Since Vasion Print is printer-agnostic and includes a centralized Admin Console, Saber could seamlessly integrate new printers at remote locations. They could also easily import existing devices and manage them from a single, unified interface. Additionally, the Chrome OS Extension included with Vasion Print enables administrators to manage Chromebooks like any other device. IT staff can configure Chromebook printer settings alongside Windows, macOS, and Linux machines within the Vasion Print Admin Console.

Saber also implemented Vasion Print’s Secure Release Printing add-on feature, which they could easily enable on any network printer. Vasion Print’s native Control Panel Application allows users to authenticate seamlessly by entering a PIN code directly on the printer’s touchscreen.

Their Vasion Print instance lives on a SaaS solution that’s also integrated with 60+ AWS technologies such as VPC, EC2, and S3. The powerful partnership between Vasion and AWS has streamlined Saber Healthcare’s print consolidation, management, and compliance risks, freeing their administrative team to concentrate on challenges elsewhere in their IT environment.

Saber Healthcare’s Results

Shortly after implementing Vasion Print, Saber Healthcare Group successfully unified its diverse and distributed print environment within a single, easy-to-manage Admin Console. This led to an estimated 75% reduction in print-related helpdesk tickets. Now, a single member of Saber’s 11-person IT team can efficiently manage printing for 12,000 users.

When confronted with complex Chrome OS print management and the end-of-life of Google Cloud Print, Saber transitioned to Vasion Print SaaS in just 24 hours. This allowed the IT department to continue deploying cost-effective Chromebooks for its physical therapy staff while streamlining print management and saving valuable time.

Looking forward, Vasion Print’s Secure Release Printing will help Saber remain compliant with HIPAA guidelines while potentially reducing its printer fleet, providing another avenue for significant cost savings.

Read the full case study here.