Preparing for the Inevitable: EHR Downtime Procedure Prep

Losing access to your EHR system without a downtime procedure and strategy is not a scenario your healthcare organization wants to find itself in. Whether the downtime is planned or unplanned, EHR downtimes are inevitable. That is why having a downtime solution in place is essential to the continued success of your patient care.

When strategizing your procedures, factor both clinical and organizational considerations into your business continuity strategy for planned and/or unplanned downtime events.

Planned Downtimes

Planned downtimes are events that the organization controls. The two most common scenarios are hardware updates or software updates. You might have a system hosted by your organization or a third-party hosting vendor. In either situation, hardware updates are required to have a viable EHR system and keep operations functioning. You want to schedule these updates to have minimal impact on patient care: weekends, overnight, etc. Software updates sometimes are avoided because organizations don’t want to have the system down; but that is a recipe for disaster. Informational and security-related updates are important for keeping your systems as safe as possible and functioning at the highest capacity.

Unplanned Downtimes

There are many other scenarios where you might lose access to the EHR system. Bad weather and Internet, or power outages are some scenarios that can cause unplanned downtimes, usually at the most inopportune moment. When creating a downtime strategy for unplanned situations, you should tailor your plan to cover the most likely sources or locations that will be affected. Money invested in your downtime plan should be invested where you are most likely to see the greatest impact. While you can’t anticipate every possible scenario, a flexible and well thought out plan should cover the most likely sources and locations to be affected.

Procedure Planning: Clinical and Organizational Factors

During the procedure planning phase, some top considerations are communication protocols with staff and patients concerning visit workflow. Since you are reviewing the most likely locations and resources to be affected, communication with clinical staff should address these scenarios accordingly. How will your team be made aware of an outage? How will you ensure the downtime plan is being followed if communication is affected? How will you communicate when the downtime is over?

Regarding patient workflow, when creating your strategy, you’ll want to consider the following:

• Check-in process – What will you do for check-in during the downtime?
• Billing – How will staff access patient balances, and how will payments and copays be processed?
• Triage – Will patient histories need to be reviewed to capture vitals?
• Charting and Reviewing Patient Visit Notes – Will providers need to review history and previous visit notes? How will they chart the new visit?
• Check-out Process – Will you schedule follow-up appointments?

During your strategizing, determine if you’ll incorporate a downtime solution software or some type of backup technology. Decide what patient data, discrete or otherwise, must be collected during the downtime. Plan a process to document this data during the downtime, and transfer data collected during the downtime back into the EHR when it is up and running. Be sure to include an oversight mechanism in your plan that ensures you’ve brought all data back that needs to be brought back in once the downtime ends. It should ensure that discrete data elements, documentation captured during visits, and charges are all available. This oversight process is a key and essential part of your data quality process to make sure all data from visits that occurred during the outage has been properly transferred back over.

When reviewing the necessities of your downtime plan for your healthcare organization, remember this solution will be used when your EHR system is not available. It is not a solution to replace your existing EHR. A solution that can do everything your EHR can do will be very expensive.

Be sure to consider the most important components that will allow you to continue operations and safely see your patients and incorporate those needs to create a downtime plan that works best for you. Whether the downtime is planned or unplanned, EHR downtimes are inevitable. Don’t get caught on the wrong side of the inevitable. Start creating your downtime solution today to ensure the continued success of your patient care always.

Contact Med Tech Solutions today to start preparing your practice for the inevitable.
Let us help you ensure your EHR system is available, always.