Feb 19, 2025
You’re in the business of providing care for your residents and genuinely want to create the best experience for them and the employees who work with them directly. However, you also acknowledge that business challenges in assisted and senior living make it difficult to provide the level of care required while continuing to improve the efficiency of your communities.
If you’re an IT or operations decision-maker or local administrator, this article was written for you. When it comes to print, the headache of making decisions that are best for your residents or your organization's financial and operational health is over.
This article explores the unique business models of many assisted living organizations, the need for print efficiency while keeping local administrators happy, the challenges of streamlining and securing your print devices and workflows to avoid costly penalties, and solutions to these challenges.
Assisted and senior living communities generally have one of two business models:
- An independent community or a series of location communities that operate as a cohesive entity, with the possibility of all or a portion of their locations being acquired by a larger collection of communities.
- A corporate structure that owns locations across an entire region or throughout the country – strategically acquiring new communities or selling desirable ones when it makes financial sense.
The latter of these two models requires print provider contracts to be flexible, allowing locations to be sold or acquired without negotiating a separate agreement.
However, this can be challenging for assisted living organizations because an acquired location may own print device brands that aren’t supported by their service team. Likewise, if a community is sold to another organization, it’s essential to ensure you can shed the expense of the print devices or transfer the service to the new organization.
This is only possible with a managed print provider that is:
- Brand-neutral – allowing for any combination of print equipment to be serviced because their service team is trained on every brand available
- Provides flexible agreements – many assisted living organizations solve the flexibility concern by allowing local communities to make their own print service decisions, which reduces the ability to scale, offer consistent support, and save money
As mentioned above, if you aren’t working with a print provider who considers your business model, or worse, ill-equipped to meet your industry's needs, you risk wasting your budget, creating inconsistent resident and employee user experience, and making your locations less attractive to investors.
Speaking of inconsistent experiences…
When you work with local or regional print providers, you receive a certain level of flexibility, but you give up consistency from location to location. You care about your employees, who care for your residents, but your local or regional provider claimed they could handle an organization your size, and consistency isn’t consistent from location to location.
This is because smaller print service providers use a network of other small print service providers, like the Copier Dealer’s Association. This network ensures they can service customers outside their traditional geographic footprint.
The catch? They don’t have direct control over the quality of service provided to your other locations, creating an inconsistent experience that is out of their hands.
A managed print provider for assisted living that can serve all your locations with W-2 employees creates a consistent experience, whether your community is in Florida, California, or somewhere in between.
Additionally, an MPS team with a nationwide scope gives your administrators one point of contact every time, whether it’s the corporate office or a local community. This keeps the people caring for your residents focused on more important things and happier at work.
The need for consistent documentation and a way to keep this documentation organized has never been more important. Families want to be sure their loved ones’ medications are being taken at appropriate times or that all pertinent information is documented and readily available for review.
Modern document management systems aren’t just more efficient but also more secure. With tools like “Follow-me-Printing” and the hardening of devices on your network, the likelihood of personal information ending up in the wrong hands is reduced significantly.
Remember, personal information leaks aren’t always malicious. Sometimes, they are innocent moments where a sensitive document was released for print and forgotten about, only to be picked up by an individual who isn’t authorized to view it.
Resulting HIPAA fines can be costly.
It is possible to work with a managed print services provider in assisted living who can offer a consistent service experience, help you capitalize on economies of scale when ordering supplies and hardware, and provide a flexible agreement that doesn’t impede your organization’s business strategy.
Flex Technology Group is one of those providers, as it is the nation’s largest privately owned and brand-neutral managed print provider. With 40+ locations throughout the U.S., FlexTG offers:
- One point of contact – creating a consistent service experience
- One bill – reducing work for your administrative team
- Brand–neutral – whether you buy or sell a community, we have the expertise to service any device
- Flexible agreements – working with your growth strategy
- Industry experience – with over 30,000 customers, FlexTG brings unique experience in the Assisted and Senior Living industry
