The Information Systems on disaster are established by the ministry of health. Its primary function is to provide necessary guidance on how to response to disasters and incidents of security. Security and disaster incidents are a blueprint of an organizations downfall in attending to its duties. It also affects the organization’s way of operation. Therefore, health organizations are obliged to come up with an elaborate plan to curb the issues of security and disaster. This includes protecting the patients’ information.
Importance of preparedness
The need for health organizations to be prepared incase of any eventuality in disaster and security incidences enables it-: to discharge its role of serving the community and the patients; enables it to ensure that the protected information of the patients are available; it reduces loss and facilitates main Information System recovery; it allows advanced preparedness, and training and educating the workforce.
How the Disaster Recovery Plan works
It is developed to aid the emergency preparedness of an organization. It encompasses software, hardware, application, workstation, networks and systems and other sub parts of information systems of an organization.
The role of the DRP is confined to IS retrieval only. This also facilitates the protection of the patients’ information. However, it does not prevent the occurrence of disaster or facilitate long term Information Systems recovery.
Administration
In the event of a disaster, the information system management verifies, assesses, and records the extent of the disaster and comes up with the opposite response: systems, applications, and malfunctioned networks; departmental, localization of the impact, and organization; impact on the main services and operations.
If the management\, of the information systems deems that the incident is indeed a disaster and requires immediate actions, the management shall-: let out the disaster recovery team; and pick an individual to act as a team leader to spearhead the recovery exercise.
However, in the absence of an information systems leader, the leadership of the administration can act in that capacity to facilitate the planned implementation. It is thus the role of the disaster recovery team to check on the availability of needed materials to carry out the exercise to contain the issue, not only efficiently but also expediently.
It is worth noting that planning gathers for manual procedures used in the event of down time. This is because of the responsibility played by the Health Information Management professionals in the world of paper. For instance, the occurrence of Katrina has put to forefront the need for reviewing the plans on emergency on a regular basis. The planning and preparedness also includes the agility of the employees to instantly implement the plan.
Another factor to be considered by a health organization is the backup system to assist in recovery of patients’ information. This enables it to track the patients’ information after previous disaster. Clinical documentation systems used in New Jersey as also proved to be essential in retrieving and accessing all relevant patient data.
It is imperative for health organizations to take advantage of Electronic Health Records in the event of disasters such as Hurricane Katrina. This is because it also allows for warehousing of data. The two techniques facilitate high-speed access of basic patient information.
