Northwick Park Hospital Speeds Up Patient Discharge with Toshiba Mobile Printing

Northwick Park Hospital is an NHS acute hospital in Harrow, London, providing a full range of acute services including 24-hour accident and emergency care and specialist children’s services. Like all NHS hospitals, it operates under constant pressure to streamline activities, reduce costs, and discharge patients in a safe and timely manner.

The Challenge

Patient discharge is one of the most operationally complex processes in any hospital. At Northwick Park, the typical sequence began with a doctor informing the patient during the morning ward round that they would be discharged. However, the discharge letter and prescription were not written up until after the round was complete, and the medications then had to be labelled and dispensed in the main dispensary.

This process was proving laborious and time-consuming. The sheer volume of work, limited workspace, and staffing constraints in the central dispensary created bottlenecks. Medications had to be transferred from one location to another, and excellent documentation and communication were essential at every step to maintain patient safety.

While patients waited for their medicines, they continued to occupy a bed — a critical resource in an acute hospital. The delay between the decision to discharge and the moment a patient could physically leave the ward was a persistent source of inefficiency and patient dissatisfaction.

The Solution

After encountering Toshiba’s mobile printing solutions at the Clinical Pharmacy Congress, the pharmacy team at Northwick Park agreed to trial a Toshiba B-EP2 Mobile Printer for ward dispensing.

The concept was straightforward but transformative: instead of processing discharge prescriptions in the main dispensary, pharmacy technicians could label and dispense medications directly at the patient’s bedside using the compact, portable printer. This eliminated the need to transport medications between locations and removed the central bottleneck entirely.

The trial ran for a minimum of two weeks, during which time the team assessed the impact on discharge times, workflow efficiency, and patient experience.

The Results

Patient discharge times improved dramatically, since medicines could be labelled, dispensed, and handed to the patient on the ward without waiting for the central dispensary to process the order. Bed spaces were freed up faster, improving capacity across the hospital.

The mobile printing approach also improved accuracy and communication, since the entire process took place at the point of care rather than being split across multiple locations and handoffs.

Kristi Anderson, Principal Pharmacy Technician, stated that the Toshiba mobile printers highlighted a ready-made solution capable of drastically reducing the time patients wait to receive their take-home medicines. She expressed confidence that other NHS Trust hospitals should consider a similar programme and gave a strong recommendation for Toshiba’s products and services in a healthcare setting.

The success at Northwick Park demonstrated that relatively simple technology interventions — applied at the right point in a clinical workflow — can deliver significant improvements in patient experience, operational efficiency, and resource utilisation.