Managing practice and patient information

As part of your emergency planning process, consider doing a stocktake of all practice data storage hardware and equipment. If any of this recorded equipment is destroyed or damaged during a disaster, your team will be able to ascertain what needs to be replaced. This list can be used as part of your practice’s asset register.

If your practice leases computers and hardware, it is important to contact the leasing company as soon as possible to discuss the damage and the processes involved in replacing items.

If IT equipment has been damaged as a result of a disaster, determine the operational status of equipment. For safety purposes, seek advice from a professional. Practices may need to transfer any equipment and computers that have not been damaged to a safe operational area within the practice to ensure their protection.

After an emergency, your practice may have limited or no access to computers. This may be due to damage to computers or damage to or loss of functionality of the server. Aim to keep at least one fully charged laptop stored with current practice and patient data, or ensure the ability to access to the previous day’s back-up (whether physical or on a secure cloud).

It is important to have suitable media-reading devices available to effectively restore data when IT systems are affected.

Create and maintain a list of all your practice software and access codes, including software support phone numbers. If your software and applications become inaccessible due to server damage in an event, you will need to seek assistance from an experienced IT technician to have them reinstalled.

It’s important to have reliable information backup systems in place to support timely access to your business and clinical information following an emergency or disaster. Planning ahead will make the recovery phase significantly easier and faster.

Make sure that:

• all critical practice information is kept up to date,
• your practice data is backed up daily (and that you have confirmation that the backup process has been successful, and
• your backup data is stored in a safe offsite location.

You can store backup data in a safe external location of your choice using information storage hardware, or you can utilise an online cloud storage solution from a vendor of your choice. Speak with an IT professional as well as your medical defence organisation (i.e. Avant, MDA National) to find out what backup solution(s) will work best for your unique practice. Your medical defence organisation will be able to inform you of any relevant legalities or considerations to be aware of when making your decision.

Testing your backup system

You can check your backup system by validating your backup data against what is in your live system via a test computer. This can be done automatically by your software, or manually by your IT provider or one of your practice team members.

Backup restoration and data recovery

Backup restoration refers to rebuilding a system or server after a software or hardware failure. Your practice will benefit from having a documented backup restoration procedure which is regularly tested and validated.

If your practice has paper medical records in storage, there are a range of safeguards your team can put in place to help minimise damage caused to them in an emergency. However, it's important to note that paper medical records can be damaged irrespective of the protective measures employed.

Create a list of disaster recovery specialists in your area. Include the names of the specialists, their phone numbers and areas of expertise. If any of your paper medical records are damaged by water or fire, you will need to have systems in place to assess whether the records can be recovered. Consider contacting local recovery specialists now to understand their services, rather than contacting them for the first time during or after an event.

When dealing with damaged paper records:

• assess the damage and review the possible options for recovery,
• separate the damaged records from the undamaged records, and
• handle the damaged records as little as possible – even if a paper record is saturated, in many instances most of the writing will remain legible if water-fast pens were used. 

It may be appropriate to air or fan dry records onsite, if they are only slightly damaged by water. If records have significant water damage, contact a disaster recovery specialist to seek their assistance.