Prescription Filled

Another major hurdle in the Obama Administration's attempt to overhaul the U.S. healthcare system was cleared on Christmas Eve when the U.S. Senate passed the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act.

This move inched the United States closer to healthcare reform, but there remains a lot of work to be done. When the Senate and U.S. House return to session later this month, they must begin the lengthy process of merging the bills they passed.

Supporters of reform consider these steps not only a milestone in history, but a life-changing event considering final approval is expected to guarantee access to quality, affordable healthcare to every American.

With big news like this, George W. Smith, senior vice president/partner with Hayward, California-based Tully Wihr Company, gives a distributor's perspective on the latest and greatest things happening in healthcare related to the printing industry.

Print Professional (PP): Why did you start serving the healthcare sector?

George W. Smith (GS): When Don Knoll, CFC, Charlie Miller, CFC, and Gene Gallagher, CFC, purchased the Tully-Wihr Company (TW) back in the early '70s, one of Don's larger accounts was the Palo Alto Medical Clinic (still our client today). They started looking at healthcare and how we could improve on the services we provided to them. "Just In Time'" was the big thing back then, so we looked at how we could provide better service and separate TW from the competition and the OCC Program (On-site Cycle Count) was created. OCC is a partnership with the clients' major departments, usually nursing floors, admitting, ER, data processing, etc. [The] forms they use are counted weekly, delivered and put away with copies of the delivery receipts [which are sent] to accounting. Today, of course, with the changes in technology, TW has added many other services.