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Protect your facility in the face of disaster

Staff Development Weekly: Insight on Evidence-Based Practice in Education, July 19, 2007

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With the devastation of Hurricane Katrina still fresh in our minds-and a new hurricane season upon us once again-now's a better time than ever to review the HIPAA security rule. HIPAA requires organizations to have a disaster recovery plan that outlines what procedures to take in order to restore any loss of data.

Although your practice may have a general disaster plan that meets this requirement, it's important that your plan looks beyond HIPAA regulations and focuses on protecting your business interests. Because catastrophic disasters-whether natural or man-made-can occur anywhere, any time, and in any form, it's important that your facility be properly prepared:

• Establish an easy-to-follow plan. Loss-of-information concerns are different in healthcare than in other industries. To prepare your organization for a disaster, you need an effective plan that details what would be required to keep the plan up to date and easy to execute.
• Keep geographic location in mind. The list of potential non-natural disasters that can affect data will differ for each organization based on its location. Along with natural disasters, consider how your organization would combat a fire, power outage, theft, or even inability to contact a staff member who has specific necessary information. Identify potential disasters in your plan and assign specific responsibilities.
• Put your plan to the test. Beyond drafting your plan, testing should be your top priority. Test your plan at least once a year on site and at the actual recovery site where you back up your data, if applicable.

To get more information, go to The Doctor's Office (TDO). For the cost of just three stories, you can get the entire July issue of TDO. Click here to choose between the PDF and HTML versions for just $30. Subscribers to the online version of TDO have free access to this article. Subscribers to the print newsletter can find this article in their July issue.

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