How to Audit Paper Usage in Hospitals: A Guide for Teams

In an era where hospitals are striving for digital transformation, paper often remains an invisible drain on resources, time, and money. While it’s easy to overlook, understanding how much paper your hospital uses is the first step toward optimising workflows and driving efficiency.

Here’s a step-by-step guide for hospital teams to audit paper usage effectively:

1. Start with Procurement Records

💡 Why: Your purchase history is a goldmine of data.
🔍 Action: Review invoices and supply orders to calculate the total amount of paper purchased over the last year. Don’t forget specialty papers used in specific departments.

2. Break It Down by Department

💡 Why: Not all departments consume paper equally.
🔍 Action: Identify the top offenders. Departments like admissions, discharge, and clinical documentation typically lead the pack.
📊 Pro Tip: Categorise by type—admissions forms, patient discharge packets, lab reports, etc.

3. Observe Workflows

💡 Why: You can’t fix what you don’t understand.
🔍 Action: Shadow staff in high-paper areas. Map out workflows where paper is a staple, such as patient onboarding, consent forms, or clinical backups.
🖋️ Ask Questions:

How many sheets are printed per patient?
Which tasks could be digitised?

4. Survey Your Staff

💡 Why: The people closest to the problem often have the best insights.
🔍 Action: Run a short survey asking:

How often do you print documents?
What’s the most paper-intensive part of your job?
👩‍⚕️ Feedback Loop: Use their responses to identify bottlenecks and areas ripe for digital transformation.

5. Monitor Printers and Copiers

💡 Why: Machines don’t lie.
🔍 Action: Pull usage reports from printers and copiers. Look for data on:

Total sheets printed monthly.
High-usage machines or departments.
⚙️ Tech Tip: Modern printers often provide detailed analytics—use them!

6. Account for Storage

💡 Why: Stored paper is a hidden cost.
🔍 Action: Measure physical storage areas like file cabinets and offsite archives. Calculate the cost of storing, managing, and retrieving paper records.

7. Calculate Environmental Impact

💡 Why: Paper isn’t just a budget issue—it’s an ethical one.
🔍 Action: For every ream of paper, estimate:

Trees consumed.
Carbon footprint.
🌱 Inspire Change: Highlight the environmental savings that a paperless workflow could achieve.

8. Compare to Benchmarks

💡 Why: Context is key.
🔍 Action: Use industry averages for comparison:

30–35 sheets of paper per patient bed per day.
5.4 million sheets annually for a 500-bed hospital.

9. Summarise Your Findings

💡 Why: Data drives decisions.
🔍 Action: Create a report highlighting:

Total sheets used annually.
Top paper-consuming processes.
Financial and environmental costs.

10. Take Action

💡 Why: Awareness without action is wasted effort.
🔍 Action: Use your audit to build a case for change. Prioritise areas where digitisation can make an immediate impact, such as discharge workflows or administrative documentation.