Do You Have a Disaster Recovery Plan?

As electronic medical records (EMRs) have taken over the traditional paper documents, disaster recovery has become a vital component to maintaining HIPAA compliance in a healthcare organization. Implementation of a proper disaster recovery plan will ensure viability and make sure that the operations of the organization are functioning without downtime during periods of significant data loss.

Common Mistakes

• No current disaster recovery plan in place
• Not testing the current plan that was laid out
• The plan is not up to date with the current scope of disasters
• Backup frequencies are few and far between
• Choosing an ineffective recovery method
• Have not set Recovery Time Objective (RTO) and Recovery Point Objective (RPO)

For disaster recovery plans to work as intended, they should be updated in regular intervals, or when new applications or devices are installed in the organization.

Yesterday’s health records are just as important as today’s.

Access to historical data and its ready availability can help you identify trends, make better decisions, and increase efficiency. As healthcare organizations grow, more assets and more data are accumulated from diverse sources and interdependent systems. Therefore, preparing for events such as unexpected disasters or outages become essential to operating and maintaining your current information systems.

Consequences of not having a formal disaster recovery plan:

• Downtime during critical periods
• Non-compliance with regulations
• Patient and staff dissatisfaction
• Loss of reputation

A fire can destroy a facility, but an IT exposure could jeopardize the continuity, viability, and even the survival of the entire organization.

Short-term risks from temporary outages can disrupt workflows and therefore jeopardize operations and revenue. Greater threats and long-term impacts could result from loss of access to or information in the organization’s knowledge base.

Facing downtime in the healthcare industry is more sensitive as the information and resources in the healthcare industry are critical and sensitive. This information is of very high value to Cybercriminals. Lost data can have major implications for patient health, provider success, medical research and disease prevention, and public health and safety.

Benefits of implementing a well-crafted disaster recovery plan include:

• Protecting Records and Personally Identifiable Information
• Reducing Complexity to Avoid Downtime
• Keeping in Compliance with Data Protection Laws
• No obstacle for the functioning of the organization
• Greater Customer Retention

Your Partner In Disaster Recovery Solutions

T2 Tech develops, updates, and implements a customized disaster recovery plan that aligns with your organization’s needs. We ensure the viability – and the very survival – of your organization. We have successfully supported several healthcare providers to put solutions in place that have saved them from the headaches that come with high volumes of data management. We then work with your team to test failover procedures and functionalities for each of the applications. We do this all without taking down the production sites or causing disruption or degradation of normal operations.