Tools and Tips

• By Uzair Shamsi, Ben Crawford
• Jun 01, 2006

Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, Sept. 11 and the Northeastern blackout of 2003 are often cited as reasons for disaster response planning. While these occurrences certainly indicate the need for having a disaster plan, such planning is not new and should not fade with time. Duane Ridenour, national sales manager for Diabco-HIPAA Billing Systems, has worked in the health care and insurance industry for 20 years as a market analyst, consultant and trainer. He can be contacted at (864) 576-286.

A Business Resumption and Continuity Plan (BRCP) has been a staple of big business for decades. The BRCP is designed to guide management and employees through a high-stress environment brought on by unexpected or devastating events. Thorough planning will reduce unnecessary stress to you, your staff and business relationships; minimize the risk to your cash flow; and provide a roadmap to ensure the survival of a business.

All businesses, regardless of size, should have a BRCP. The size of your business will determine how comprehensive the plan will be. After its development, the BRCP will be an important asset to your business and require periodic review to ensure its continued relevance. Have you considered what tasks are critical to your business? Can you identify the tasks that must be performed daily and those that can wait 48 to 72 hours or more after an interruption to your business?

There are four major components of your business to be considered when developing your Business Resumption and Continuity Plan: 1. What to Plan for, 2. Backups, 3. Communications & Information Technology, and 4. Financial. This list is a suggested starting point and should be tailored to your specific needs.

What to Plan For

Before you begin, you will need to determine what types of disasters to plan for. For example, people in Nashville will not need to plan for hurricanes, but many people in California will need to plan for an earthquake. Determine what you are at risk for and then assess your potential dollar loss based on the type of disaster. If you are not able to deliver products, schedule service and repair calls or accept new patients, would that have an impact on your business? What would be required of you to overcome these obstacles and service your customers?

Conducting Backups

The first response from many business owners when asked about a BRCP is, "Yes, I do nightly backups." While this is an important piece of the overall plan, simply backing up your data nightly is insufficient. I have witnessed the tragedy of unverified backups or backups not taken off-site. If your backup runs at midnight and a fire starts at 3 a.m., your backup has literally gone up in smoke. Avoid tape as your backup media and opt for a USB flash drive or CD-ROM. These options are fast and easy to carry with you.

You also need to answer the following questions: How often should I backup data? What is involved in performing a backup? Does my software vendor recommend or require a DVD? If so, you likely have a large program and backups will take much longer. On the other hand, if your data can be backed up to a flash or jump drive, you might consider backing up more often than once a day. You also should determine how fast you can back up your data. At a minimum, back ups should occur on a daily basis.

Address Communications & Information Technology

Communication and Information Technology (IT) planning should address your need to stay in contact with your employees, patients and referral sources. Without phone service you will not be able to easily contact these vital business contacts. What are your plans if phone service is not available for three hours? Six hours? A full day? Cell phone service is typically non-existent during and immediately following disasters.

Your business may survive a devastating event, but will your employees be able to get to work? Will you be able to reach them to check on their condition? Do your employees know how to contact you? Accepting new patients and servicing them will depend on the well-being of your employees and their families. How will you deliver equipment or supplies if a significant number of your employees are not able to report to work? Your BRCP should include alternate communication methods as to how you will service your customers and how you will continue to submit claims.

Determine Financial Impact

What is the estimated financial impact to your business if your computer system is down for a day? For those using a Web-based product, you have to prepare for outages in your area as well as where your data is hosted. The Internet may be working, but the phone lines may not. What guarantees do you have for data availability? Some Web hosting sites do not guarantee 100 percent up time, and others allow for shutting down during a crisis. During a disaster, will your vendor waive or suspend their fees so you can continue to operate? One company based in Simi Valley, Calif., NovaStor, offered free off-site storage for 30 days to companies working with small businesses in the Katrina affected areas. Will your Web-based application vendor do the same?

Do you have a location where you could set up a temporary office? How many employees can that site handle? How much time will it take to set up a network, restore your data from a backup and get phone service turned on? Redundancy at separate locations is good, but if they are too close together or in the same region the advantage is often minimized.

Many customers run patient reports by product. For example, all oxygen patients are identified and appropriate information printed on the report. The person who is on-call keeps the pager/phone together with the notebook. If you were to lose your computer system today, can you identify your current enteral nutrition customers without going through each file drawer? If you were not able to get to your office, how would you contact your patient base?

How will you pay your employees? Do you have sufficient reserves to meet a temporary spike in monetary needs? How will you pay your vendors? The financial health of your company can be easily jeopardized if you do not have a plan. Hiring an outside firm is always an option to storing your data off-site, but it can be cost prohibitive. Most HME software is truly Windows-based, so the database is small enough to fit onto a USB flash drive. This device is less than $100 for one gigabyte of easily carried storage, a method that is much faster than using a DVD. Additionally, finding a USB connection is more common than a DVD drive.

In preparing your BRCP, prioritize your needs, focus on the most important and then plan your plan. Thorough planning will reduce unnecessary stress, minimize the risk to your cash flow and provide a roadmap to ensure the survival of your business.

The most important component to remember is that the purpose of a BRCP is to be your guide through a high-stress situation. There is no perfect template for all businesses. Each entity must determine what is important for its individual business and how to address those issues. While you might overlook an area, the real failure is in not developing a BRCP.

This article originally appeared in the June 2006 issue of HME Business.