CASE STUDY
Hackensack Meridian Health Transforms Print Environment With Vasion Print
Vasion Print has revolutionized Hackensack Meridian Health’s configuration efforts. It truly has.
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—Adam Capezzuto, Lead Client Technology Engineer, Hackensack Meridian Health
The Numbers
18
Hospitals
45K+
Employees
25K+
Chrome OS devices
8+
Print servers eliminated
with more reductions planned
0
Print-related disruptions
using Vasion Print
using Vasion Print
The Summary
Hackensack Meridian Health (HMH) was pioneering a shift to Chrome OS operating systems, the first healthcare company of its size to do so. HMH needed a scalable and efficient print management solution that could ensure a smooth transition for its clinicians and staff. Vasion Print (formerly PrinterLogic) rose to the occasion, working in seamless harmony with Chrome OS and causing zero print downtime for clinicians and staff.
The Customer: Hackensack Meridian Health
Industry
Healthcare
Hackensack Meridian Health has a mission to transform healthcare and be recognized as the leader of positive change. It operates 18 hospitals, boasting the #1-ranked adult hospital, children’s hospital, and cancer center in the state of New Jersey.
The Challenge
Pioneering a New Infrastructure Setup in Healthcare
Hackensack Meridian Health (HMH) was making an ambitious shift: The hospital network decided to switch its entire environment to Chrome OS, replacing its existing infrastructure. With 18 hospitals and over 45,000 employees, this was a massive project.
They’re the first (and so far only) healthcare organization of their size to use Google infrastructure on such a large scale, and they’re excited about the possibilities it opens up for business operations—and most importantly, their healthcare providers and patients.
As Lead Client Technology Engineer Adam Capezzuto puts it:
“What we’re doing with Google is revolutionary in the healthcare space. We’re helping create these new Chrome OS possibilities. Google has written software for us. Citrix has customized their workspace app for us. Once we put our seal of approval on this, many more healthcare organizations are going to adopt a similar setup,” he says.
Breaking new ground like this means building customized solutions where none exist. One of the roadblocks that HMH encountered was the way printers were assigned within the Google Admin Console.
“The way the Chrome infrastructure is built, printers are assigned by organizational unit (OU). We would have had to set up a folder for every single group of devices that needed to print to a particular printer,” Adam says. “It would have been a nightmare to manage our Google infrastructure with thousands of folders full of Chrome devices.”
Hackensack needed a better solution for printer management and infrastructure that could complement their new Google infrastructure.
Hackensack needed a better solution for printer management and infrastructure that could complement their new Google infrastructure.
A Seamless Transition for Healthcare Staff
Throughout all of these changes, the HMH Digital Technology Services Team (DTS) had two important concerns:
The first was to create a seamless transition for their healthcare staff.
“These are clinicians,” Adam says. “They want to take care of patients, and technology can get in the way of healthcare delivery if not thoughtfully implemented. Our biggest role as DTS is to remove roadblocks and enable our clinicians to deliver care without having to stop and deal with technology. We needed printing to be simple.”
Their other important priority? Powerful cybersecurity features. Anything less was a non-starter.
“The number one biggest challenge in the healthcare industry right now is how advanced threat actors have become and their abilities to infiltrate not only us but our partners,” Adam says.
“I get very frustrated with potential vendors who don’t have basic cybersecurity measures in place, such as when a product requires the user to be an administrator on their workstation to run it. Build your software so that it functions within the parameters of modern-day security.”
“I get very frustrated with potential vendors who don’t have basic cybersecurity measures in place, such as when a product requires the user to be an administrator on their workstation to run it. Build your software so that it functions within the parameters of modern-day security.”
Challenges
• Providing a smooth transition for clinicians during a massive infrastructure change
• Better print management and infrastructure compatibility with Chrome OS
• Powerful cybersecurity features and access controls
• Better print management and infrastructure compatibility with Chrome OS
• Powerful cybersecurity features and access controls
Our biggest role…is to remove roadblocks and enable our clinicians to deliver care without having to stop and deal with technology. We needed printing to be simple.
The Solution
Centralized, Secure Print Management
Adopting Vasion Print allowed HMH to successfully update its infrastructure while offering the seamless transition that clinicians needed.
“The biggest benefit is that nothing has changed for the end users,” Adam says. “There’s nothing new or different that they have to do. They don’t have to choose a printer or locate a printer. They just hit Print.”
Every printer is already assigned to a device, and DTS manages all printing and print workflows through a single interface: the Vasion Print Admin Console. Admins can give other groups access or visibility as needed, without giving them unnecessary access to the Google Admin Console. “For security reasons, there aren’t a lot of people who should have access to that,” Adam says.
Updating Legacy Systems
Once HMH adopted Vasion Print, they realized that switching to serverless printer management had unexpected benefits. It allowed them to adopt better standardization and clean up legacy environments. They were able to eliminate nearly half of their existing print servers and drivers, reducing network traffic overall and speeding up printing times.
“There were always print spoolers that crashed or an error that could cause a 5,000 page-backlog,” Adam says. “Print jobs had to go all the way to the data center and then back to the printer. With Vasion Print, those jobs are coming out faster, and we’re reducing our WAN traffic.”
Vasion Print also offered better options for setup customization than Google or other print management options.
Before engaging Vasion Print, for example, DTS discovered that with other print management technologies, the only print queue they could universally deploy to staff was Secure Print. This inadvertently caused clinician workflow disruptions. “A physician would print something and go to the next patient, but they had to stop and interrupt what they were doing to release each print job,” Adam says. “It was tied to their user ID, so they couldn’t have support staff do it for them.”
Adopting Vasion Print solved that problem by providing additional secure printing options that were simpler to configure and deploy while keeping Secure Print options available for users printing sensitive or confidential materials.
“Being able to deliver printing that doesn’t require badge tapping was very important. It made sense for our desired workflows,” Adam adds.
• A seamless transition for clinicians
• Secure, convenient direct IP printing
• Faster printing that eliminates spooler delays
• Secure Print options that keep work flowing