Foundations Health Solutions Delivers Fast, Reliable RDS Printing with UniPrint Infinity

For more than 15 years Foundations Health Solutions has been delivering a comprehensive portfolio of management services to many of Ohio’s long- and intermediate-term healthcare facilities.

Foundations provides the operational, financial and employee management services that allow facility managers to keep their focus on patient health, knowing that necessary administrative, compliance and regulatory activities are being professionally managed.

To support its highly dispersed network, Foundations deploys Microsoft Remote Desktop Services (RDS) to centralize management and distribute applications to more than 90 multifaceted healthcare providers.

With approximately 5,500 users who connect from facilities, home, and other remote locations, the IT team provides administration and helpdesk services for print management issues and manages all network equipment, including devices and printers.

The Challenge

Foundations Health Solutions relies on a stable RDS environment to support its users in a complex and heavily administered industry where printing and document management are critical.

Early on, IT administrators experienced the headaches associated with maintaining multiple print drivers on terminal servers.

“Trying to maintain those drivers was an absolute nightmare; we spent a lot of time on print issues”, remarked Todd Hall, CIO at Foundations.

With more than 900 printers of various makes and models located across and beyond the network, print spooler crashes were common and printing from remote locations could be challenging.

To eliminate their printing problems, Foundations searched for a cost-effective print management solution that would solve driver incompatibility issues associated with RDS environments and could fit within their budget.

With a small team responsible for the entire network, administrators also needed a simplified yet reliable solution to reduce helpdesk calls and improve users’ printing experience, whether they were connecting from a facility, working from home, or on the road.

Webinar: Creating a Software Defined Healthcare Printing Solution

The Solution

After trying built-in and third-party solutions, Foundations resolved their printing issues with UniPrint’s patented PDF-based Universal Print Driver (UPD) technology.

Network administrators were able to centralize print management by installing a single universal printer driver recognized by all printer makes and models.

Using the PrintPAL mapping utility, printer deployment and management were simplified and helpdesk calls for printing issues were significantly reduced.

Using UniPrint Infinity, Foundations was able to resolve remote printing challenges locally and deliver fast, reliable print jobs from any geo-location to any printer.

“PrintPAL is great, especially for our mobile people – it looks at their IP address, and deliver printers based on their specific location,” remarked Hall.

UniPrint’s UPD compresses encrypted print jobs into much smaller PDF files, optimizing bandwidth and promoting consistently fast RDS printing and secure delivery across platforms.

Users also have the option to save, email and archive documents, and can access familiar features particular to their local printers.

The Foundations team found UniPrint Infinity easy to install, manage and maintain, and now spends less time managing user printing problems.

Having solved common printing issues, the team has been able to shift resources to more important tasks at the heart of their mission – helping facilities stay focused on patient care.

“UniPrint has made a big difference, and I wouldn’t want to go back”, remarked Hall. With increasing privacy and compliance concerns in the healthcare industry, Foundations expects to implement a secure printing solution in the near future and will rely on UniPrint’s technical support team to introduce new functionality across their network.

“UniPrint support is wonderful, and they’ve really bent over backward to help”, notes Hall.

The Benefits

Foundations Health Solutions deployed UniPrint Infinity’s UPD technology to eliminate multiple printer drivers on terminal servers, reduce print spooler crashes and enable reliable printing from remote locations.

With UniPrint, Foundations’ users experience fast, stable and secure printing regardless of device or location, and network administrators spend less time responding to print-related helpdesk calls.

As a result, the IT team has been able to shift resources away from print management to more important tasks, reducing support costs and improving overall efficiency.

Key Benefits

• Eliminates the need to manage multiple printer drivers on terminal servers
• PrintPAL utility centralizes printer deployment and simplifies management
• Enables local resolution of remote printing issues, reducing helpdesk calls
• Optimizes bandwidth and promotes consistently fast printing across platforms
• Delivers reliable, secure printing from any location to the nearest printer
• Enhances user printing options, including print preview, PDF email, and archive functionality

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