Failure in EHR Backup Plan

Sutter Health in Northern California experienced a serious EHR crash this week that left medical staff unable to access patient medications and records for nearly one whole day. Healthcare IT News reports that on August 26, the system crashed at 8 am and stayed down for nearly a full day. Lack of adequate emergency planning and system support are two factors to blame for this serious fail.[1]

“This incident is especially worrisome,” said Bonnie Castilla, RN, CNA legislative director, in a news release. “No access to medication orders, patient allergies and other information puts patients at serious risk.”

One of the problems is that Sutter Health represents multi-facility system and the follow locations were impacted by the EHR failure including Alta Bates Summit Medical Center, Eden Medical Center, Mills-Peninsula Hospital, Sutter Delta, Sutter Tracy, Sutter Modesto and numerous affiliated clinics

This highlights a serious challenge facing EHR implementations. An effective EHR backup plan is an essential part of EHR implementation. The importance of disaster recovery planning cannot be overstated. In the case of a healthcare system, it could mean the difference between life and death. Hospitals can face any number of crisis from blackouts to earthquakes to system failure. Last year, I post an article on the fast disaster recovery of Mercy Health after a devastating tornado. Three big takeaways from that disaster recovery included:

• However strong you are today is how strong you’ll be in a moment of crisis.
• Health care belongs to the community. How can you protect it?
• Electronic Health Records are essential.

In light of this crisis with Sutter Health, some critics of EHR have used this as a way blaming EHR systems, but actually there is plenty evidence to suggest an effective EHR system with disaster planning is actually safe during an emergency. See this report on Mercy Health’s rapid recovery.

[1] Erin McCann. “Setback for Sutter after $1B EHR crashes.” Healthcare IT News, August 28, 2013.

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