This weekend my website had the first outage it has had since re-launch in Novemeber of 2008. The PHP 5 engine on my hosting site had some issues and we could only host our home page. All PHP pages went down.
Now, for a blogger like myself, this is a bit maddening and irritating, but if a hostpital were to have an outage like that, it could be deadly. Today’s fully EHR integrated hospital environment is critically dependent on their electronic systems. Labs, histories & prior conditions, disease management, allergies, even critical documents like DNR orders are all embedded in the electronic systems. Nearly every bit of information about the patient is in these systems. When they are not available patient care can come to a screaming hault.
It is critical to make certain that the site has a reliable disaster recovery procedure and process. If you quit pulling charts (most sites stop pulling charts after going electronic) make sure to have a way to get to some critical patient information locally. Setup automated tasks to gab inpatient status and drug orders. Ensure that you have paper processes in line to take over when an outage occurs.
Even the largest and most progressive systems will still have outages. Be sure to plan for them.
I think this topic will demand some in depth writing this week.
