This American University Hospital has 5,853 full-time employees, 131 fellows, 928 active medical staff, 932 licensed acute care beds, and 180 subacute and long-term care beds.

The IT management was looking for a solution to ensure patient record handling is compliant with HIPAA and JCAHO rules, and to print safely all needed patient documents for doctors and nurses without requiring any PC, with just a secure smartcard. This Hospital decided to use SecureJet as it was fitting all their needs.

An American university hospital turns to SecureJet for HIPPA compliant patient care reports.

1. Saving cost

Eighty nursing units - providing clinical services to 1,100+ beds in the areas of perioperative, medical/surgical, ambulatory and critical care - produce highly confidential patient care reports (about medications, diet, IVs, etc.) that can number in the hundreds of pages. And, depending on the nursing unit, new reports get printed out on HP LaserJet 4100 and 4200 workgroup printers every one-to-four hours.

“We were expending a lot of resources for large volumes of volatile information” said the project manager. Every four hours, all reports become obsolete, requiring output of a completely new set of reports - by patient and by nursing unit. Each unit generates 10-12,000 pages of output per day.
 

2. Confidential information: HIPPA and JCAHO rules compliance

“We needed better control of printed output because, with so many nursing units spread across four main hospital buildings, security is always an issue. Though these printers are not in public access areas, they do store information that only authorized personnel should access.”

Confidentiality is also an issue. All that paper falls under HIPAA and JCAHO compliance rules. Both the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 and the Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations (the nation's predominant standards-setting and accrediting body in health care) set standards for the management of and access to patient health data stored or transmitted in electronic form.
 

Another issue was downtime due to power outages and other emergencies. Patient care reports are stored in the printers. When the hospital loses power, workers fall back to a paper system. The Project manager wanted to be able to deliver online information even during downtimes.
 

To deal with these and other matters, the project manager evaluated the existing reporting process and turned to The SecureJet™ Smartcard (SC) Printing Solution from Jetmobile. The SecureJet SC printing solution consists of:

• SecureJet Print-SMP software component (inside printers and the appropriate driver installed on originating computers).
• “Smart cards” (plastic cards - the size of credit cards and containing electronic memory - that are inserted into readers).
• SecureJet Auth-SC reader terminals (with heavy-duty keyboard) installed on destination printers (each reader terminal is plugged to the printer).

Now, all authorized users (physicians, nurses) are given secure Smartcards that are used to identify individuals. User identification is required for ALL print jobs - documents are printed only when users identify themselves at the printer by inserting their Smartcards into the SecureJet readers.

Computers and printers in the hospital nursing units do demand printing. SecureJet SC secures print jobs all the way from the application to the controlled delivery onto paper. Print jobs are “wrapped” (encrypted) on PCs, ERP and Unix systems, sent electronically over the network, stored on the destination HP printer hard drive, and decrypted at print time, when only the appropriate nursing units can retrieve them. And all print jobs are tracked and logged.

Of the 650 HP LaserJet printers on the University hospital campus, it was initially sought to convert 100 printers in the nursing units to SecureJet. He originally ordered 15 units, installing the first in January 2003 in postoperative nursing units.

The hospital does its own Smartcard administration through a desktop support group. SecureJet installation and software updates are done remotely.
 

5. After pilot: SecureJet rolled out across all of hospital

“Jetmobile created a win/win situation with the use of SecureJet at the hospital. They were very helpful in getting product pilot review, pitching the product to senior management, and then tailoring to our needs. Without the success this first installation has achieved, we wouldn't be rolling out across all of hospital. The SecureJet solution may eventually reach even further into the hospital system.”

On the hospital campus, four main hospital buildings cover an area eight square city blocks wide. The hospital has 5,853 full-time employees, 131 fellows, 928 active medical staff, 932 licensed acute care beds, and 180 subacute and long-term care beds.

For the modern hospital, the term “critical care” means lots of paper. In the nursing units that provide clinical services, nursing assignments carry a substantial patient care load. For the restoration of patient health, the essential nursing personnel who attend the needs of sick persons must rely greatly on the computerized POE process. The electronic ordering of medications significantly reduces risks posed by handwritten orders, and computerized alerts and guidance help prevent medication errors.

“We chose the SecureJet solution because it saves resources and is HIPPA compliant so that only those persons who need to review a report can do so. Compatibility with hospital's installed base of HP LaserJet printers is crucial. The installed base of printers is 85 percent 4100s and 10-15 percent 4200s.That ratio will reverse in twelve months” said the project manager.