What are we printing?
Despite the reduction in printing prescriptions since eps practices still spend a lot of money on printer consumables. Although in theory we get our printers for free the consumables we pay for. As we get printers in drips and drabs we have a variety of different models all of which seem to take different cartridges or toner. We have a store cupboard full of these sort of which may be out of date some of which may be for printers that we no longer have despite the fact that you can pretty much order everything next day if not same day delivery we must have hundreds of pounds tied up in that cupboard.
I was recently speaking to Lee Brear about an idea that he proposed and I wondered if anybody had done something similar or was interested in speaking to him about it. I’m not on commission and there’s nothing in this for me other than promoting what sounds like a good idea and seeing what you all think of it.
His idea is to replace all the printers in your surgery with a brand-new Internet connected printer of one type. The printers speak to a central supply source about when they’re running out of ink and the ink that is needed arrives in the post with a message on it saying please put me in printer X. This is all done for a small monthly fee. He claims he’s done audits in practices to show that this can save up to 50% of their consumable costs. It also means that practices get brand-new printers which in theory saves the CSU/ICB money. Of course part of the audit is rationalising how many princesses you need because there’s no point having three per room…
So thoughts, what am I missing? Is it a good idea? Anybody want to speak to Lee about it?