In Case of Emergency


As the recent fires in Southern California proved, disaster is always ready to strike when you least expect it. Because of the importance of medical records, it's vital for every practice to safeguard their information as a precaution. The following are simple steps that can and should be taken:

1. Always keep up-to-date employee contact information, as well as a complete master vendor list of purchased and leased equipment, both on and offsite.



2. Determine a separate location where you can temporarily see patients, should your practice become inaccessible. Should disaster strike, be sure to let your patients know where your alternate location is, and alert the local media.



3. Back up all of your computerized information on a second server that is offsite. This will ensure that you never lose any critical clinical and financial data.



4. Invest in business interruption insurance. Make sure your policy covers payroll, rent, and other essential bills, as well as all sorts of multi-peril incidents. (The waiting period for implementation on most policies is three days.)

Where I live in California, natural disasters seem to be a way of life, but I also know of many colleagues who suffered tremendous losses in Hurricane Katrina. God willing, most of will never have to experience such catastrophes, but it is crucial to never forget that preparation is a cornerstone of medicine. That mindset should extend to disaster readiness, for your own piece of mind as well as for your patients.


Lest we forget the lessons learned from Katrina on the volatility of having only paper medical records (see article), of course it's always a good idea to have your patients' medical records stored electronically offsite. Our medical transcription prodiver actually stores all of our records online for us, which is very handy.


As always, I'd love to hear from you. Any suggestions or points which I missed? What do you think?