| Have you ever thought about what would happen to | | | | emergencies, such as disk crashes or accidental |
| your practice if some kind of disaster occurred? | | | | deletions. Ideally, you should have a local backup for |
| What would you do if a fire destroyed your office? | | | | each computer, in addition to your main data store or |
| How would you respond if one of your computers | | | | server. We prefer external two-terabyte USB drives |
| suffered a hard disk crash? Would you lose your | | | | for local and offsite backups. Be sure to include email |
| patient records? These are issues most people only | | | | and CD-ROM images of all your software. Consider |
| think about once it's too late. Statistics show that | | | | encrypting your local and offsite backups, that way if |
| most businesses never open their doors after a | | | | someone steals the drives they won't have access |
| catastrophic event. You need a disaster recovery | | | | to your data. |
| plan to protect your practice and your patients. | | | | Offsite backups are critical for disasters, such as fire, |
| There are several critical elements you need to | | | | flood, or theft. For best results, use an offsite |
| consider in your plan. First, conduct a survey and | | | | backup that will give you physical access to the |
| analysis of your office. Make a list of all hardware and | | | | storage media so you can quickly restore your data. |
| data stores. Keep track of the software you use, | | | | Offsite backups send files over the internet, so you |
| not just the data. Belarc Advisor is a free program | | | | are limited by bandwidth. Make sure your office has |
| that will create a list of all the software and settings | | | | high speed internet and that your backup includes the |
| on a computer. Add these reports to your recovery | | | | most critical data. You may want to periodically |
| plan. | | | | update your offsite backups to include email and |
| Create a diagram that shows the office setup; | | | | software images, since these are usually too large to |
| include information about printers, computers, | | | | transfer over the internet. |
| networking gear, and other important hardware. If | | | | Third, be sure you monitor the backups. Monitoring is |
| you have to rebuild your office, the diagram will | | | | critical; you should get daily reports indicating that |
| speed up recovery. Include as much detail as possible; | | | | your backups ran, and whether or not they were |
| that way you can hand the diagram to an IT | | | | successful. Backups that aren't functioning provide a |
| professional and have them set up the office for | | | | false sense of security. |
| you. Be sure to purchase business insurance. Your | | | | Finally, if you don't have an Electronic Medical Record |
| plan won't help if you don't have the financial | | | | (EMR), get one. Paper charts are almost impossible to |
| resources to rebuild. | | | | back up. Paper is a fire hazard, and even the fire |
| Second, backups are the most important part of | | | | sprinklers could ruin your charts. EMRs are infinitely |
| your plan. You should have both local and offsite | | | | more survivable, and key to your disaster recovery |
| backups. Local backups are handy for minor | | | | plan. |