Though electronic health records (EHR) bring a whole new level of convenience and user-friendly operations to your healthcare facility, there is probably always that lingering fear in the back of your mind: "What happens when our EHR fails?" After reports of total EHR outages, it is a valid fear for any hospital or medical office that uses these systems in order to store their patients' information.
The loss of such information, especially when you have a great number of patients, could be catastrophic.
Instead of worrying over the loss of information, you should be asking yourself: "How can we prepare for this?" If you put the right motions into place, worrying over such a failure is a thought that won't cross your mind. Here are a few steps you can take in order to create a backup plan, to prepare for EHR failure and lessen the risk of losing all your patients' information.
1. Understand Why EHR Failure Happens
If you're using an EHR system in-house that is not cloud-based, all of your patients' information is likely being stored right on the hard drive. So really, if anything happened to that computer—stolen, broken, natural disaster strikes—you would lose all that information. However, most companies that offer an EHR platform do so with a cloud-based storage system, so that even if your computer crashes, your information can still be located online.
But with that being said, cloud-based solutions are not foolproof either. Systems can crash or be hacked into, which can certainly be avoided, but mistakes and misfortunes do happen. You can rely on your EHR provider to be supplying you with a trustworthy system that will last you through the ages with no problem, but you should still be planning for the worst-case scenario.
2. Create a Strategy to Keep Things Moving
After you understand how and why EHR failures can happen, you can then begin to develop your backup plan. Hopefully, you already have security systems and natural disaster protection in place, so we can skip ahead to building a system to keep processes moving when there is a problem. By doing this, you and your team can continue to care for patients, and document their visits, even when disaster strikes and your EHR is on the fritz.
Start by creating an outline that delegates workflow in such an event, including selecting an individual whose main job is to have the system brought back up. If all of your computers are down, you will have to keep handwritten documentation, which is something that needs to be consistent and organized throughout the office. By forming this emergency plan of action, you and your healthcare professionals can reduce the stress of the situation while still continuing to care for patients.
3. Backup Data on a Separate System
This won't prevent EHR failure, but backing up your data regularly on another system can add an extra layer of support for your healthcare facility. As mentioned earlier, even programs that store information on the cloud can still have problems. But when you take the extra measure to protect your patients' information by storing it in multiple places, an EHR emergency doesn't seem all that scary anymore.
There are several ways in which you can store your patients' information elsewhere besides your EHR software system, just be sure that it is safe, secure, and HIPAA compliant. Consider external hard drive options and keeping that hard drive in a separate location. If you worry over having that information in a separate, physical place, you can choose to store it on an additional cloud solution.
4. Consider Recovery Methods
Discuss with your EHR provider about how information can be restored if your system does experience a loss. More often than not, there is a recovery solution, depending on the storage system the EHR uses. However, you should continue to ensure that your system is updated and that recovery would be possible.
Don't forget to ask how long this recovery can take, so that you and your healthcare professional team can prepare. For instance, if it will be a few weeks, then you need to plan on how you would continue processes and procedures in your office throughout that time period.
5. Practice Your Backup Plan
Though most companies are confident in their ability to keep your information secure, you can always ask your EHR provider if they have any suggestions as to how you can further protect your office in the event of a crash. Many companies, and even HIPAA, offer ways in which you can plan for the loss of patient records, all of which should be practiced.
It's great if you have a backup plan in place, but it won't do you any good if the plan itself doesn't work. Like a fire drill, have trial runs every so often to ensure that your backup plan will, in fact, pull through for you if your EHR happens to fail. IT professionals or even your EHR provider can help you do this, to best protect your practice from such a frightening fate.
Author Bio:
Alex Tate is a health IT Consultant at CureMD who provides perceptive, engaging and informative content on industry wide topics including EHR, EMR, practice management and compliance.
The views, opinions and positions expressed within these guest posts are those of the author alone and do not represent those of Becker's Hospital Review/Becker's Healthcare. The accuracy, completeness and validity of any statements made within this article are not guaranteed. We accept no liability for any errors, omissions or representations. The copyright of this content belongs to the author and any liability with regards to infringement of intellectual property rights remains with them.