Dymo Prescription Printer – DYMO LabelWriter 4XL

I always love when people talk about the paperless medical office. It’s as if they believe that after implementing an EMR they will no longer have to have paper in the office. Turns out, EMR software can print out a lot of paper if you’re not careful.

While ePrescribing is on the horizon in many places, the harsh reality is that many still have to print out prescriptions. Add in the requirements around prescribing controlled substances and in almost every state doctors using an EMR are still having to print out prescriptions.

In my clinic, it always felt wrong to print out an entire sheet of paper for one prescription. Eventually we got our vendor to support printing out multiple prescriptions on one sheet of paper. That helped, but many patients only need one prescription so that’s a lot of wasted paper. Beyond the green movement, wasted paper = wasted money.

With this background, that’s why I was intrigued by the DYMO Prescription Printer that I saw at MGMA. I’d worked with DYMO label printers before since the lab I worked with printed off lab labels directly from our EMR software. It makes sense that they could use a little bit larger printer and do the same thing with prescriptions.

It’s pretty obvious to see the paper saving benefits of using a DYMO printer like this, but I think the other advantage to this printer is its size. The printer has such a small footprint that you could easily put it a lot of places that a standard printer just won’t fit.

I admit that I haven’t done a full analysis of the savings using this printer compared with a standard printer. However, the nice thing about the DYMO printers is that they’re thermal printers which means that you’ll never have to spend money on ink or toner to print prescriptions. That’s pretty nice.

I’d love to have some of my readers try out the DYMO Prescription Printer to let me know what they think and whether they think I should add it to my list of EMR related technology products. Maybe I should see if DYMO will give one away to one of my readers to try out and report back.

I always love when small adjustments to current technology can make a huge difference. Or in other words, did I just write a post about a label printer? Sometimes the best innovations are subtle changes.

About the author

John Lynn

John Lynn is the Founder of HealthcareScene.com, a network of leading Healthcare IT resources. The flagship blog, Healthcare IT Today, contains over 13,000 articles with over half of the articles written by John. These EMR and Healthcare IT related articles have been viewed over 20 million times.

John manages Healthcare IT Central, the leading career Health IT job board. He also organizes the first of its kind conference and community focused on healthcare marketing, Healthcare and IT Marketing Conference, and a healthcare IT conference, EXPO.health, focused on practical healthcare IT innovation. John is an advisor to multiple healthcare IT companies. John is highly involved in social media, and in addition to his blogs can be found on Twitter: @techguy.

10 Comments

  • Concerning your comment about using the DYMO to print controlled substances, do you know if it would be able to print controlled rx’s that satisfy state and federal laws (i.e. in Kentucky, need a void background pattern if duplicated, quantity check boxes, watermark with “Kentucky Security Prescription” across back, etc)?

    Thanks

  • Looking at the warranty from Dymo, the “2 year Limited” warranty will be void if the media used is not Dymo. Thermal Rx Paper suppliers must be registered and certified with State Pharmacy Boards – will Dymo be manufacturing this type of paper so their warranty is valid? This may be a low cost printing solution, but there are many missing features (only USB interface, no security for paper or printer, etc) excluding this printer from the e-prescribing printer industry. I’m confident you are writing about a label printer.

  • My name is Ben Cunningham and I am the Brand Manager for the DYMO LabelWriter 4XL. Regarding CH’s question about the DYMO LabelWriter 4XL being able to print controlled Rx’s that satisfy state and federal laws, the answer is yes, this printer does have this capability. In order to ensure that we have complied with all state and federal regulations, we have selected a partner, RxPaper.com, that has an established expertise in prescription writing that meets state and federal regulations (KY included). Concerning CA’s comment about the 2-year Limited warranty offered on the LabelWriter 4XL, given that RxPaper.com is a certified DYMO vendor, the DYMO warranty will not be affected. Be sure to select the prescription roll with the timing marks on the back for the best performance possible.

    We believe that by combining RxPaper.com’s thermal paper solution for Rx scripts and the LabelWriter 4XL, physicians will benefit from a cost effective, safe way to print scripts that reduces the way associated with a full sheet of paper. If you’d like more information on the LabelWriter 4XL visit dymo.com and be sure to check out RxPaper.com/dymo for more information on Rx paper for your state.

  • So the EMR just print to the DYMO? Or does the DYMO have it’s own software interface, with templates for prescriptions with ‘brand only’ and checkboxes on it??

  • Charles,
    I expect most will print straight to the Dymo. They have some Dymo software, but that would be pretty inefficient.

  • We have Amazing Charts and am looking at this printer……but, the Dr. would like it to be able to ( when the Rx is ready to print be able to choose this printer and print….not hve to go into a seperate Dymo program and print….how does this all work?? We also need it to print controlled Rx from FL.

  • Lois,
    You’d have to ask Amazing Charts to be sure it will work with them, but the printer acts just like any other printer. It’s surprisingly simple and should be able to print straight from Amazing Charts. The key to using it is just making sure that whatever you’re printing is formatted to the right size for the printer. Once you have that formatted right, it shouldn’t be any issue.

    I don’t know all the rules for controlled Rx printing in FL. Although, I seem to remember talking to Dymo about having some security paper that’s required in most states for controlled Rx and they said they do have that option. I want to say they said they sold it from a third party partner, but I can’t remember for sure. I’m sure if you gave them a call they could easily tell you.

  • I sold a number of these printers a year ago for prescription printing. What I didn’t know was originally Bisphenol A (BPA) was used to make the thermal paper. When it was found to be a health hazard it was replaced with Bisphenol S (BPS) because it’s safer. Wrong. It turns out that BPS just wasn’t studied like BPA. Earlier this year the study came out and it said, Conclusion: BPS, once considered a safe substitute for BPA, disrupts membrane-initiated E2-induced cell signaling, leading to altered cell proliferation, cell death, and PRL release. The study was conducted by the University of Texas Medical Branch. The bottom line, in the customers words “This isn’t a good solution for a medical environment.” So I now have a bunch of used label printers that I need to sell.

  • I know this is an old post, but I have a question to consider.

    Most prescription paper, either handwritten or printed have security features like watermarks built in, but what about further up the chain?

    What if an attacker (or an employee) gets access to the network or computer that the printer is attached to? Wouldn’t we need a printer that can authenticate, maybe at the root driver(software) level to make sure that an unauthenticated user can’t print rx for pain meds? Do you know of any printers like this? Most of the ones I am finding are glorified label printers.

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