The Challenge
At Cuckfield Medical Practice and The Vale Surgery, print is not just an office function. It is part of the clinical workflow.
Every clinical room uses a Brother HL-L5100DN printer to produce written prescriptions and blood forms. When a printer goes down, the impact is immediate. Doctors and healthcare assistants can be held up, prescriptions and forms can be delayed, and the practice risks missing one of only two daily blood-collection windows.
If that window is missed, samples can become unusable and patients may need to return. For a busy GP practice, that creates pressure for clinical staff, disruption for patients and extra work for the person responsible for keeping systems running.
That responsibility sits with Geoffrey Alcazaren, IT & Facilities Manager at Cuckfield Medical Practice and The Vale Surgery. Geoffrey looks after IT and facilities across the practice, so reliable supplier support matters. Printer issues need to be resolved quickly, clearly and without adding more admin or uncertainty to the day.
The challenge was to make print reliable enough that the surgery team could stop thinking about it.
What ARC Did
ARC took ownership of the managed print service and gave the practice a more proactive, responsive way to keep printers running.
ARC helped by:
- Managing toner proactively, with printers reporting toner levels to ARC’s server so replacement toner can be dispatched automatically at around 15-20% remaining.
- Responding quickly when issues are reported, with engineer support arranged same day or next day.
- Using remote access to diagnose and resolve printer problems where possible.
- Supporting the practice through technical issues, including an SMTP change that affected scan-to-print and print-software compatibility issues during a desktop-to-laptop migration.
- Providing knowledgeable, non-judgmental support from people who understand ARC’s own products and the pressure a GP practice is under.
The result is a print service that feels calmer and easier to manage day to day. Instead of the practice having to chase toner, troubleshoot failures or manage uncertainty alone, ARC provides clear support and practical fixes when they are needed.
“When a printer goes down here, it’s chaos. With ARC, that’s the one part of my job I genuinely don’t worry about.”
Geoffrey Alcazaren - IT & Facilities Manager, Cuckfield Medical Practice and The Vale Surgery
The Outcome
Before ARC’s managed print support, printer downtime could quickly create disruption across the surgery. A single offline device could delay prescriptions, interrupt blood-form printing and increase the risk of missed blood-collection windows.
After ARC’s support, printing has become more predictable. Toner arrives before it runs out. Faults can be diagnosed remotely or handled with same-day or next-day engineer support. When wider technical changes affect printing, the practice has a supplier that can work through the issue with them until the service is stable again.
For Geoffrey and the wider surgery team, the biggest change is confidence. Print is no longer something that needs constant attention or firefighting. Doctors can continue issuing prescriptions, healthcare assistants can keep blood forms moving, and the IT & Facilities Manager has more headspace to focus on the work that improves the practice.
Key outcomes include:
- Less day-to-day worry around printer reliability
- Proactive toner replacement before supplies run out
- Faster support through remote diagnostics and same-day or next-day engineer response
- Reduced disruption to prescriptions, blood forms and clinical workflows
- A more trusted supplier relationship, including direct support from ARC engineer Dil
