Hurricanes and healthcare: The importance of business continuity

[Alexandra Casey]

After the incredible damages created by Hurricane Sandy, many organizations in the United States are taking a closer look at their disaster recovery strategies. In healthcare, disaster response has two components - business continuity and recovery.

Importance of business continuity
For hospitals, business continuity is far more important than recovery. Key patient data must be kept available during an outage, especially one caused by a disaster event. When hospitals lose access to patient data, they still have to find a way to provide treatment. During emergencies, the number of patients coming to hospitals tends to rise, making data accessibility even more important.

Recovery, on the other hand, is more about getting systems back up and running at a normal level. In the healthcare industry, recovery is important, especially from a data protection perspective. However, business continuity solutions have to be prioritized ahead of recovery to ensure consistent patient care.

Considering different types of outages
Outages can be created by a variety of conditions during a hurricane. The most likely problem is downed power or network lines, cutting off electricity or internet connectivity within a hospital. Most hospitals have backup systems in place to overcome these problems, but the scale of hurricane damages can render those backup systems inadequate, as extended outages can leave generators without enough fuel or backup network systems dealing with more bandwidth than they can handle.

Flooding is another risk during a hurricane, as is wind, which can cause debris to damage parts of the hospital, including technological infrastructure.

These factors combine to make IT downtime or an EHR system outage a significant possibility during a hurricane.

Wind, flooding and similar problems can also make it impossible for clinical staff members to get to the hospital. This makes a continuity strategy that can be enacted by a diverse range of employees a critical consideration.

Preventing outages based on these problems is highly dependent on building a holistic business continuity strategy that can be operated by a significant portion of the hospital staff.

Developing a solution
Turning to a product like the Summit Downtime Reporting System can provide hospitals with an easy-to-use platform for business continuity. Summit DRS stores reports of key data separately from the EHR system and network, ensuring that information can be printed during an emergency and made available to clinical staff members. This ensures that an outage will not put a hospital out of service, enabling organizations to maintain care through even the most challenging disasters.