According to experts, disaster recovery (DR) is how a business restarts itself following a disruptive incident that is natural, man-made, or a systems failure. On the other hand, business continuity implies a more comprehensive consideration of how your business continues to operate not only following a disaster, but also the departure of a key member of your management team or department head or any other incident or event which could interfere with daily operations.

Recently, we have witnessed the severe impact that weather has had on entire communities, their people, property, and infrastructure. While these tragic events certainly get our attention and cause us to reevaluate, reinforce, and rehearse our existing disaster plans, do we really give due diligence to planning for business continuity (BC)? To most people, BC and DR go together. That being the case, you will be well served to consider particularly the role IT can play to insure that any interference to your business's work flow is as small as possible.

Stepping back and examining the possible consequences of each type of adverse incident is an important step in performing a business impact analysis (BIA). By doing so, you can anticipate and plan specifically for each such event. Handling the consequences of a fire is much different than handling the sudden departure of the corporate IT manager or payroll manager.

First, you need to consider your most valuable asset – people. After a disruptive event, how will your employees communicate, where will they work, and how will they continue to perform their jobs? Who needs to take the leadership role and under what circumstances? What aspects of the workflow are essential and how will they continue?

Second, determine which systems, processes, and business units are essential. Particularly when it comes to IT assets and resources, you should consider not only your internal and contracted resources and assets, but also the businesses which develop and support the critical software applications you use. For example, while IT Asset Management is useful, it may fail to track which software versions your business is using.

Recent developments in technology, such as virtualization, cloud computing or other data center technology-enabled business solutions, social media, or mobile devices, can facilitate business continuity.

This blog cannot begin to cover all aspects of BC/DR, but anticipating, planning for, and rehearsing how you will handle a disruption to your business is well worth the effort, time, and money. Just ask someone who didn’t. Keep in mind that IT plays a major role and should be an essential part of your planning.

What are your doing to insure BC in your business? To learn more about how PCT can help, contact us.

A Major Health Care IT Paradigm Shift

“Best Practices” in the old days – paper pushing.
Historically, health care in general and long term care specifically, has been intensively paper based - forms, spindles, chart tables, racks, and binders. Documentation was (and still is) the name of the game and pushing paper was the only way. Even regulatory enforcement surveys were based on paper compliance with bedside visits to verify the documentation. Paper-based documentation consumed a lot of trees and filled a lot of storage files and storage units.

“Best Practices” today – Getting past the paper paradigm

• How has IT helped your operation?
• If you have embraced IT, how has it benefitted your operation and the services you deliver?

Prime Care Technologies wishes you a Happy New Year. I once had a boss whose mantra was, “All problems can be viewed as opportunities.” That being the case, then 2012 should be an amazing year of opportunities for business in general and long term care specifically. I encourage you to look at all of your “opportunities” and to explore how IT can help you convert those opportunities into gains.

To long term care and other health care providers we say, “Thank you for your selfless service to our nation’s frail and elderly in 2011.” To our Fortune 1000 clients as well as state and local government clients, “Thank you for the services and products that make our lives that much better, our country an example to the world of what freedom and liberty can mean.”  

Question: What "opportunities" would you like IT to help your company, agency, or facility tackle?

Over the last several months, this blog has covered topics focusing on various aspects of IT and its impact on long term care. In our Thanksgiving Day blog, we observed how important IT has become to all of us – in how we work, how we communicate, how we entertain, how we educate, how we conduct business; IT is everywhere. Although slow in adopting technology, LTC providers have made significant progress in understanding, valuing, and embracing IT as a powerful tool to meet ever-changing challenges. For example, twice we demonstrated this fact as we momentarily digressed from IT-specific topics to alert readers about changes to billing therapy services to Medicare and avoiding workforce-related lawsuits.

These are trying and potentially dangerous times for the economy in general and long term care in particular. The vital role that IT can play in helping LTC providers survive reminds me of the African gazelle. The gazelle can reach a peak speed of 48-50 mph outpacing many of its predators. However, the cheetah can reach 0 to 60 mph in about 3.3 seconds with a top speed of 70 mph. You do the math. Since gazelles are a favorite meal for cheetahs, the difference between life and death is sustainability vs. spurts of brilliance. Cheetahs can only sustain such high speeds in bursts; gazelles on the other hand can maintain their top speed for miles. They can also make sharper turns and initiate quick changes of direction with minimal reduction in speed. Cheetahs cannot. Although slower, gazelles have the advantage if they are alert, sure-footed, and responsive to threats and opportunities.

Likewise, to survive and thrive, to outpace the “cheetah’s” of poor reputation, burdensome and sometimes conflicting regulation, competition, and reduced reimbursement, LTC providers must be on guard, quick to respond, and nimble. However, they also need vision. To blindly charge day-to-day into the fray without a clear understanding of what is going on around them and within their operations, can be suicidal. Data mining and business intelligence can help providers discover, discern, and act on the data they already have. In real time, digital dashboards can reveal business-critical information (Key Performance Indicators – KPIs) displayed in ways that easy to understand.

In 2011, we also discussed how important protection of your IT assets and data is and why disaster plans must include IT. “After the fact” is too late. Also, IT asset management (ITAM) can help providers to track and protect their IT assets, use, and storage.

Just over the horizon loom major changes in health care, ACOs being one of those changes. The significance of ACOs to IT in long term care can be found in the need for interoperability and IT infrastructure. Whether ACO’s pose a threat or an opportunity will depend on the specific market served and the provider’s willingness and ability to respond. Being uninformed and ill prepared is like a deer facing on-coming headlights. The prospect of becoming health care road kill is not appealing.

Question: IT is here to stay, are you on board? In what ways has IT helped your operation?

I know it’s late in the day and many of you are already heading to your turkey feast destination or making last-minute preparations, but I think expressing gratitude is never too late - or too early for that matter. First, if not for the vision, talent, dedication, and hard work of so many, we would not enjoy the explosion of opportunities that information technology offers us. Whether it’s for entertainment, checking on one’s health, mining data, checking on the weather or road conditions, tracking finances, operating a business, promoting ideas, products, and services, or just meeting or reconnecting with friends, IT is everywhere. Some may argue that IT may have complicated our lives, but in the long run, our lives, our play, our work, even our worship have been positively impacted and enriched. For this, we should be very grateful.

Further, our PCT’s team expresses our sincerest gratitude to our customers and partners. We have seen phenomenal growth over the last year and without them, we could not be where are today and will be going forward.

Lastly, to our team members, thank you for your dedication, hard work, and sacrifice in serving our customers and supporting one another. That’s what makes this company work.

Happy Thanksgiving!