Tricerat Blog

Epic EMR Printing For Healthcare

Written by Chris Svehla, Solutions Engineer | Sep 25, 2024 1:00:00 PM

Printing in Epic and other EMR application software


Epic Print is the go-to solution for Electronic Medical Records (EMR) software, boasting some of the most robust functionality to help hospitals and healthcare organizations help their patients. While Epic provides leading software applications to the healthcare industry, Epic printing consists of multiple software modules running on multiple computers with multiple print streams.

These complexities can lead to simple tasks like printing discharge paperwork or laboratory labels to be both complex and time-consuming for users and IT administrators in Epic environments.

Epic Print Servers and Their Challenges

Even in a simple Epic environment, print jobs can traverse multiple servers, operating systems, and networks. For the most part, Epic print servers do not come with native printing capabilities and instead rely on Windows printing subsystems to do the ‘heavy lifting’ of printing.

As any IT administrator can attest to, those Windows subsystems create their own issues and headaches can arise in multiple areas. Some of the drawbacks to uses these types of subsystems have extremely limited functionality, including:

  • Requiring driver matching between server and client for client printing
  • No native way to systematically redirect queued jobs and new jobs from a down print server
  • Poor bandwidth utilization
  • Lack of central management of queues and printers from multiple machines
  • Lack of adequate job auditing
  • Security concerns, partially because of the limited functionality

And with native Epic printing, these issues can quickly multiply when you consider the need for the required redundancy for Epic and Windows servers. This significantly increases the overall burden of admin overhead.

Simplifying Epic Printing for Healthcare Facilities

With enterprise print management solutions specifically designed for Epic printing in a healthcare environment, like those from Tricerat, the burden of printing from Windows subsystems is largely eliminated, giving administrators an easier and more stable way to manage printing in their Epic environments:

  • Simplified Driver Management: Use a single virtual driver for both Epic system and client-based printing
  • Enhanced Security: Proprietary printing format adds encryption for compliance
  • Improved Performance: Efficient job routing and compression for better bandwidth control
  • Streamlined Administration: Unified approach saves time and resources

Tricerat provides a centralize console for administrative printer management on Epic servers, and driver management for print servers. This allows for control on both sides of the printing equation from one console. A built-in print server failover feature provides the automatic failover needed for high availability and redundancy printing to vital healthcare operations running 24/7, and our print job tracking tools allow for auditing from both the users and Epic systems level.

Virtualized Drivers for Seamless Integration

With solutions like Tricerat, admins now only must manage a single virtual driver on both Epic system printing and client-based printing. That same virtual driver can be used for print server printing as well as printer redirected printing for those situations where users bring their local printers with them into their Epic sessions to reduce the time and effort an admin will need to spend on managing drivers.

Failover and Redundancy for Uninterrupted Service

Once a print job is created and sent to a print server, Tricerat uses their proprietary printing format for added encryption for security compliance and compression for better bandwidth control:

  • Once the job reaches the print server print jobs are routed efficiently to give much needed ‘flow-control’ to the print spooler.
  • A failover system ensures that if one server goes down, another can immediately take over. This is critical in healthcare settings, where any downtime can impact patient care.

Maximize ROI with Tricerat’s Efficient Print Management

Sys admins are constantly searching for ways to improve efficiency while reducing costs. ScrewDrivers® delivers immediate ROI by minimizing helpdesk tickets, lowering the strain on IT staff, and cutting down on bandwidth usage.

  • 75% Fewer Helpdesk Tickets: Centralized management and automated failover reduce the number of tickets sys admins need to handle, allowing them to focus on bigger projects.
  • Cost Savings: Fewer printer downtimes and improved bandwidth utilization result in direct savings for hospitals, lowering operational costs and making IT teams more efficient.

All of our enterprise software is available for free 30 day trials. No credit card required. Start your proof of concept in minutes, and see how easy Epic printing can be!

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