Business Continuity Planning Improves With Offsite Services
When any healthcare provider is without access to patient data because of an unplanned event, the importance of business continuity planning quickly becomes apparent, and should promote action.
Interruptions are going to happen, but how a hospital deals with those interruptions varies widely from provider to provider. There are human errors that lead to interruptions, natural disasters, technical glitches and other catastrophes that can get in the way of a normal working day. How is your facility prepared to deal with these issues? If you don’t have a business continuity planning process ready, now is the time to start considering it.
Your business continuity planning should focus on recovering all or some of the patient care systems that you rely on to provide your patients with excellent services. In the most extreme cases, a person’s life could be at stake, which is why so many hospitals are taking business continuity so serious.
When you build your plan, it should stand up to any disruption or failure in any of your systems. The best plans for business continuity include standards set by the International Organization for Standardization and the International Electrotechnical Commission. Together, they formed a basis for planning that includes several areas:
- Compliance
- Access control
- Systems development and management
- Security policy
- Asset classification and control
- Security (organizational, personal and environmental)
- Systems development and maintenance
Hospitals are developing task forces to spearhead the business continuity planning. The task forces, also known as leadership teams, are familiar with all departments in the hospital and what they need to run efficiently where access to data is concerned.
The team will often conduct a business impact analysis on their system to assess the financial impact related to its ability to perform medical procedures. There are also non-financial aspects to consider when it comes to loss, including the damage to the system’s reputation when events occur, such as a business continuity disruption.
Engaging in communications to bring more awareness to business continuity is also important. Your staff must be educated and prepared to handle any situation before it occurs. This is education that is ongoing because that’s what it takes to be truly prepared.
Maintenance and testing are also frequently occurring events that keep business continuity planning fresh and the hospital prepared – always. For instance, let’s say a server goes out; what is the plan to gain access to that data? In the best cases, there are multiple data centers in play, which means if one goes down, there will be others for backup.
OffSite Image Management, Inc. uses the best data centers to keep client’s medical imaging studies safe, secure and always available. When it comes to business continuity planning, OffSite has you covered. We offer a 360-degree solution when it comes to medical imaging, HL7, and archiving and accessing hospital data. Contact us today and let’s discuss ways to put your business continuity planning in gear.