University of Maryland Medical Center Relies on Zebra Card Printer to Create Staff IDs

10,000-Plus Employees, Physicians and Others Use Badges for Access Control, Timekeeping, Checking Out Scrubs, Controlling Cameras in Operating Rooms and More

Keeping up with technology is a major challenge for many hospitals across the country, not just in order to provide cutting edge medical care, but also for taking care of important administrative functions such as creating secure employee badges. The University of Maryland Medical Center (UMMC) is one example of a hospital that tries to stay at the forefront of technology for a variety of purposes.

The medical center, a large teaching hospital in downtown Baltimore, has 669 beds with more than 1,000 attending physicians, a diverse staff of more than 6,000 employees, as well as volunteers and others who have business within the facility. The medical center’s legacy of combining cutting-edge medical research with innovative and compassionate care has been recognized for nearly two centuries and continues today.

When the medical center sought a card printer to create its employee badges, it chose the Zebra P420i printer.

“We wanted to make sure we could print our badges without interruption,” reports Sgt. Kathy Shanks, Security Project Coordinator for UMMC. “We have about 10,000 active badges in the system at any given time, and we use the printer every day, five days a week. We are always printing badges because of our large size and our complexity as a major teaching hospital.”

The medical center recently replaced a Zebra P420 printer with the newer Zebra P420i printer to take advantage of its revolutionary i-functionality, which simplifies card printing via automatic driver configuration, intelligent color optimization and a special RFID system for ribbon image counter and ribbon low notification.

“The printer is extremely reliable and is working well for us,” Sgt. Shanks notes.

Reliability is critical to the medical center’s operations, as all employees, contractors and vendors are required to wear badges at all times on the hospital grounds. Since 1994, the medical center has printed its own encoded magnetic stripe cards, which perform a variety of functions.

The magnetic stripe cards are used for access control, timekeeping functions, scrubs and linen control, and tracking exactly who has changed camera angles in the center’s operating rooms. Only authorized individuals can control the cameras, and this system enables hospital officials to know who is using them. Magnetic stripe card readers also control access to sensitive hospital areas.

The Zebra P420i

The standalone P420i dual-sided color printer prints sharp, readable ID photographs, graphics, and text edge-to-edge in seconds. The enclosure includes a viewing window to monitor the printing process without opening the unit. The P420i printer ribbon synchronizes automatically, eliminating the need for operator intervention. A self-cleaning cartridge thoroughly removes dust before printing, eliminating card rejects due to dust contamination. The P420i features Zebra’s revolutionary i-functionality, which simplifies card printing via automatic driver configuration, intelligent color optimization and a special RFID system for ribbon image counter and ribbon low notification.