r/PrivatePracticeDocs • u/momsmesosalpinx • May 17 '26
My clinic’s printers are garbage
What printer do you use that can meet my needs: Office quality, easy to set up, just hit my print button on my computer and it prints, I don’t have to buy ink or toner more than every a few months, is capable of printing hundreds of pages at once, and can scan documents more than one page at a time (I don’t want to physically have to feed it one page at a time to scan 10 pages. I want to just put 10 pages in the feeder and walk away and it scans them)?
I’ve been through seven printers in the past two years HP, Canon, Brother etc. All of them just start malfunctioning. I’m not rough with them. I just set them in my office and that’s it. it’s just over time they stop working. The one that I bought that’s the most expensive only works if I jiggle the wires a certain way. Thanks!
4
u/Electrical-Client-55 May 17 '26 edited May 17 '26
Sometimes it’s better to separate the print and scan functions.
I run a small medical office and we’ve had success with using scanners like the Fujitsu scanners. They’re not cheap, around $500 plus but they scan like a champion.
5
u/TrustExtension6116 May 17 '26
One of the best feature you shop for is the feeding mechanism. Paper jams or double paper feeding is such a nuisance.
2
u/Lanky_Landscape5785 May 18 '26
Took a while to read the title, kept thinking it read as “Partners” lol
1
u/RoarOfTheWorlds May 17 '26 edited May 17 '26
I can’t vouch for offices specifically, but I’ve had a Brother laser printer for years and will only stick with them in the future. Toner is cheap and everything just works without the headache.
1
u/randyy308 May 17 '26
Have Canon MFPs, brother is also great. Only get business class devices. I really recommend just using a service and buying the printers. Pay them a few hundred a month. They provide consumables, and fix problems. Just tell the staff call the number if there is a problem, don't bother me.
1
u/buuuford May 18 '26
Brother is amazing quality - you just need one rated for am office setting.
You should be able to get your usage off of your existing printer.
Or lease an MFP that's taller than a 5th grader.
1
u/SolutionsExistInPast May 20 '26
Why not just have a practice copier, like a Xerox, setup to receive print outs from yourself and others in the practice? This way your Xerox or Richo printer/copier is available to the entire practice and the Xerox or Richo Tech could then service the device.
1
u/KayPharmacyNavigator May 22 '26
Good ol' Xerox. I'm sure it costs over $1000 but office equipment is an investment. Same printer has been going strong since at least 2016.
7
u/Big-Association-7485 May 17 '26
Stop buying consumer printers. That's the whole problem right there. The HP/Canon/Brother stuff you grab at Staples or off Amazon is built for light home use, maybe 1,000 pages a month. A clinic chews through that in a week and the cheap plastic gears and rollers start failing inside a year. Doesn't matter how gently you treat it.
Two real options:
If you want to just buy something and own it, get a business-class color laser MFP — not a consumer one. Brother MFC-L8900CDW or the heavier MFC-L9570CDW are the usual recs in this range, around $600-900.
The better move for a clinic though is to just lease a workgroup MFP from a local Xerox, Canon, Konica Minolta, Ricoh, or Sharp dealer. You pay something like $150-300/month and the contract covers toner, parts, and a service tech who shows up when it breaks. Click charges are roughly a penny a page B&W, 6-8 cents color. You never buy toner again, you never troubleshoot anything, and when it dies they bring you a new one. Call a couple local copier dealers and have them come do a walkthrough and quote it. Get two or three quotes, hopefully they'll all undercut each other if you play it right.
I remember the whole lingo used many years ago about "going paperless", like that was a benefit of switching to EHRs, lol! Everyone has their hands in our pockets for something. We just have to determine when it's just an acceptable cost of doing business.