How to Prepare Your Organization for IT Downtime

Technology keeps your organization running. Employees rely on internet access, cloud applications, email, phones, business software, and other systems throughout the day. For healthcare organizations, access to the EHR and patient information can be especially critical.

So what happens when one of those systems becomes unavailable?

IT downtime isn’t always a complete outage. A slow EHR, unreliable internet connection, hardware failure, inaccessible application, or other technology issue can disrupt normal operations and affect your team’s ability to work.

That’s why IT downtime planning should happen before a problem occurs.

What Is an IT Downtime Plan?

An IT downtime plan outlines how your organization will continue operating when an important technology system is unavailable.

The goal isn’t to anticipate every possible technology problem. Instead, your plan should identify your most critical systems, determine how an outage would affect operations, and establish what employees should do until normal service is restored.

A good place to start is by asking:

  • Which systems does our organization rely on most?
  • How long could we reasonably operate without each one?
  • What processes would be affected during an outage?
  • Who needs to be notified when something goes down?
  • Do employees know what to do while systems are unavailable?
  • How will we return to normal operations once service is restored?

Answering these questions before an outage can make it much easier to respond when something does go wrong.

Don’t Overlook Slow Systems

Downtime doesn’t necessarily mean a system has stopped working completely.

Recurring slowness can also have a significant impact on productivity. If employees regularly wait for applications to load, experience connectivity problems, or struggle with an EHR or other critical platform, those small delays can add up.

Pay attention when employees consistently report the same technology problems. Recurring performance issues may be a sign that hardware, network capacity, software, or another part of your IT environment needs attention.

Addressing those issues before a particularly busy time of year can help prevent additional disruption when your systems are under greater demand.

Know What Your Backups Actually Protect

Having backups is an important part of downtime planning, but simply knowing that “we have backups” isn’t enough.

Organizations should understand what information is being backed up, how frequently backups occur, where they are stored, and how information would be restored if it were needed.

It’s also important to test your backups.

A backup that hasn’t been tested may provide a false sense of security. Regular testing helps confirm that your data can actually be recovered and gives your IT team an opportunity to identify problems before you’re relying on that backup during a real incident.

Make Sure Employees Know What to Do

Technology is only one part of downtime readiness. Your employees also need to understand their role.

For example, if a critical application becomes unavailable, employees should know whether there is an alternate process to follow, who should be contacted, and what information needs to be documented during the outage.

This is particularly important in healthcare environments. If an EHR becomes unavailable, practices should have established procedures for maintaining access to critical information, documenting patient care, communicating internally, and entering information back into the appropriate systems once they’re restored.

A plan that only your IT team understands isn’t a complete downtime plan.

Test Before Your Busiest Months

The worst time to discover a problem is when your organization is already operating at full capacity.

Before entering a particularly busy period, take time to review your technology environment. This can include:

  • Testing backups and recovery procedures
  • Reviewing internet and network reliability
  • Checking the performance of critical applications
  • Identifying aging or unreliable hardware
  • Confirming employees understand downtime procedures
  • Reviewing who has access to critical systems
  • Making sure important vendor and IT support contact information is current

You don’t necessarily need to perform a major technology overhaul. The goal is to identify potential problems while you still have time to address them.

Downtime Planning Is an Ongoing Process

Your technology environment changes over time. You add employees, replace equipment, adopt new applications, move information to the cloud, and change the way your team works.

Your downtime plan should evolve along with it.

Periodically reviewing your critical systems, backup strategy, recovery procedures, and employee responsibilities can help ensure your organization is prepared when technology doesn’t work as expected.

How Prepared Is Your Organization?

You may not be able to prevent every technology disruption, but you can control how prepared your organization is to respond.

Shared IT can help evaluate your current technology environment, review backup and recovery strategies, identify potential vulnerabilities, and develop a plan to keep your organization operating when unexpected issues occur.

If you’re not sure when your backups were last tested or what your team would do during an outage, talk with a Shared IT technician. It’s much easier to answer those questions before you need the answers.