Harris County Hospital chooses Source Technologies' FormsPartner® software and secure MICR laser printers to reduce print time and eliminate preprinted form stock

Harris County Hospital District chose a Source Technologies' printer system because...

• Source Technologies' printing solution seamlessly integrated with their existing HBOC host application software
• Reduced print times and significantly decreased forms inventory saved the hospital valuable time and resources
• Provides faster access to important patient information which can help them to work more efficiently and focus on saving lives

With 5,000 employees and 30 different locations throughout the greater Houston area, Harris County Hospital serves thousands of patients each day. Because it has one of the nation’s largest trauma centers, immediate access to patient records can make the difference between life and death.

Most nurses' stations and admissions offices at Harris County had two printers, each serving a single purpose. Typically, a dot matrix printer was used to print admission forms, while a laser printer was used to print appointment slips. Each printer used costly preprinted forms, requiring excessive inventory space and forms management. Although Harris County wanted to reduce the space requirements for these printers and their forms, the real incentive for making a change was the printing times required under the old system. The combination of two separate printers and preprinted forms was resulting in critical printing delays that were unacceptable to Harris County.

Source Technologies implement FormsPartner for Harris County that seamlessly integrated with their HBOC host application software. The solution included custom-configured Source Technologies laser printers attached to the Ethernet local area network (LAN), and interfaced with the HBOC software. It also included electronic forms that were designed and loaded into the printers' nonvolatile memory.

Now, when data is sent to the printer, the corresponding form overlay is called out of memory based on commands embedded into the datastream. The data is merged with the overlay, resulting in a completed form printed on plain paper.

Today, Harris County benefits from reduced print times and significantly decreased forms inventory. FormsPartner is used in the admissions office to print patient admission forms and at nursing stations to print appointment slips, medical histories, lab results and other documentation. Clinics and pharmacies also use the electronic forms capabilities on thermal transfer printers for producing prescription labels, dietary requests, bar codes, and more. In short, Harris County now owns fewer printers, does not have to store preprinted forms, and has significantly faster access to important patient data.