When it comes to your healthcare data there are any number of events that can occur that will jeopardize the integrity of that information or your access to it. Flooding, power outages, theft and Mother Nature are all prime suspects. What can we learn about disaster recovery in rural hospital settings where the worst happens?
Midwestern residents are no stranger to violent storms that bring lightning, thunder, sudden
downpours that wash out roads and worse yet, tornados that leave a miles-long path of utter devastation. The tornado that ripped through Joplin, MO in 2011 is best remembered not only by the aerial photos of suburban homes ripped to shreds, but also of the rural city’s main hospital, St. John’s Mercy Hospital, which was completely ruined by the EF5.
One thing is for certain – as images of the ravaged hospital went out from every news network in the country, hospital administrators everywhere began to consider how such a disaster would affect their facility and their data. You probably also began to mull over your disaster recovery plans for your rural hospital. What you should know about the disaster that struck Joplin is that IT and operations aren’t separated; they’re actually connected in many ways.
While St. John’s was dismantled by demolition crews in February last year, the data on thousands of patients lived on thanks to the disaster recovery plan administrators
initiated long before the tornado struck.
St. John’s had a well-defined disaster response within its electronic health record (EHR) system. The EHR vendor was on board with this plan, obviously, and patients were able
to continue to receive care at a mobile facility using the exact same data healthcare workers were using at the original structure. Disaster recovery in rural hospital plans should allow you to continue treating patients as you were before the disaster, not start back up.
Anyone relying on paper records or film in their healthcare facility should know that such items were found up to 70 miles away from the hospital. However, administrators had already switched to a new integrated EHR system that used scanning technology to make digital copies of all the paper records. All the records were stored in a datacenter located offsite.
As a person involved with a rural hospital, you should know that a key piece of the puzzle in disaster recovery planning involves getting full cooperation from your EHR vendor. You need to make sure your vendor has the ability to be flexible when disaster strikes and have the best interests of your community at heart. They should make every effort to get your systems back online so you can treat the people of your community.
Based not far from Tornado Alley, OffSite Image Management, Inc., knows how valuable it is to keep your records stored digitally, offsite, in Level IV datacenters where your information will be safe and available to you, regardless of how bad your situation gets. OffSite focuses on the needs of the rural healthcare provider, which means we will be at your side to help you get your system up and running should Mother Nature take a nasty turn in your community.