Intermountain Healthcare Saves Big with Web-to-Print

Speaking at the recent In-plant Graphics webinar, “Big Savings with Healthy Web to Print,” Operations Manager Tami Reese shared how Intermountain Healthcare’s Design & Print Center (DPC), has been able to save more than $1.3 million annually, enable HIPAA compliance and control branding by adding Web-to-print. The solution, internally called Print It! (RSA’s WebCRD) has increased efficiency for customers and the print center.

Tami Reese (left) and Communications Specialist Shauntel Gonzalez go over a proof in Intermountain's Design & Print Center.

In addition to presenting Intermountain’s story, Reese offered candid insights and addressed numerous questions during the 20-minute Q&A that followed the presentation.

Register now to listen to the webinar recording.

Before Web-to-Print

Until a few years ago, Intermountain, a Salt Lake City-based nonprofit health system and health insurer, didn't have an in-plant. Employees could send print jobs wherever they wanted. This presented problems with tracking print spending and controlling the Intermountain brand.

As part of a broader initiative to operate efficiently, improve processes and reduce costs, Reese was asked to develop a business case in 2011 to create a consolidated print facility, otherwise known as an in-plant. Based on Reese’s study results, the DPC opened in October 2012. At the time, she calculated a 10-year ROI, but the savings have been so great that the in-plant is on track to deliver a five-year ROI.

Internal customers are caregivers and internal departments like marketing, forms, employees and the firm’s health plan, SelectHealth. Intermountain also has limited external customers with different pricing that purchase patient and provider education pieces.

Initially accepting print requests via email and using an outside party for an online catalog (at an 11% fee for every document listed in the catalog), the in-plant knew it could be more efficient. Its manual process was error prone, led to longer turnaround and made branding and compliance control difficult. After talking with other in-plants and conducting research, Reese felt WebCRD was the best product for her in-plant.

The Solution

Intermountain implemented WebCRD in May 2017 and is working on implementing RSA’s QDirect output manager for transactional work and RSA’s ReadyPrint prepress, as well.

To remind employees of the role they play in helping Intermountain Healthcare patients lead healthier lives, the in-plant displays its motto proudly in the shop: “We supply the hands that provide the care.” Posing in front of those words are (front row, from left): Cameron Giles, Shauntel Gonzalez, Tami Reese and Keilah Iloilo. Back row, from left: Quentin Gibson, Mark Burningham, Rich Bott, Simon Ortiz, Jake Helgesen and Megan Kerr.

Using a four-phased approach, the in-plant set up the online ordering site, built a variable data print business card template (using WebCRD’s Dynamics module) to automate the business card process and continues to build the online catalog (migrating products from an external catalog). The fourth phase is getting user authentication and establishing branded ordering sites, catalogs and credit card payments for external customers.

Pilot Group and Marketing: Important to a Successful Implementation

Prior to going live with online ordering, the DPC engaged a pilot group. The feedback from that group helped to increase user friendliness of the system, fine tune the ordering process and develop training materials and videos to step users through the process.

Marketing the system entailed advertising in Intermountain’s internal newsletter, placing flyers with every order, offering training classes, creating user guides and videos, and posting a banner on the company's main website. While the DPC has been able to capture a good portion of the volume that was being sent out from Intermountain’s 22 hospitals due to lower internal pricing, external spending still happens and the in-plant is actively looking to curtail it.

Benefits and Results

Reese sees many benefits of adding a Web-to-print solution. The DPC has been able to validate 2017 savings of $1.36 million. The brand and HIPAA compliance and control abilities have been huge. The in-plant is seeing increased efficiencies for both customers and the print center and can now provide consistent and accountable pricing, tracking and reporting. Billing that used to take 12 hours a month not takes just two hours.

Leadership support has been a big benefit for the DPC, too.

“It's been important to have the leadership support, relaying the message, ‘this is our investment, you need to be using our investment, we're here for a reason, we're going to save the company money and protect the brand,’ " says Reese.

Key Lessons

Reese says the DPC has learned several key lessons from implementing a Web-to-print solution. She suggests that other in-plants:

• Dedicate a resource to manage inquiries and problems, and train users.
• Dedicate a resource to building the catalog and managing WebCRD.
• Plan on implementation taking longer than anticipated due to unknowns.
• Work with your technology partners to build and implement the solution. They can be life savers.

Reese feels that perhaps the biggest lesson was to be flexible and open-minded in the implementation process and keep the end result in mind.

“There were just so many unknowns,” she says. “[There were] little challenges along the way, but there are always solutions to everything. So, it's been good. It's been a really good experience. We've come so far in the last year; there's no way we could have foreseen this.”

What’s the biggest benefit of adding Web to print? “The whole automation of it,” she declares. “Just people being able to submit what they want to do and watch it along the way and get the notifications. It’s just how easy it is.” Now that’s healthy Web-to-print.

To hear more of Reese’s thoughts, download the Intermountain case study and listen to a replay of the webinar here.