Key Takeaways

• A minimum viable hospital focuses on essential applications and procedures needed for clinical continuity during outages.
• Healthcare organizations must understand and protect patient data to comply with HIPAA, especially during cyberattacks.
• A robust business continuity and disaster recovery (BCDR) plan is essential for maintaining patient care during technology failures.

Defining the Minimum Viable Hospital

The concept of a minimum viable hospital involves identifying the essential applications required to maintain clinical continuity during outages. Healthcare organizations typically pinpoint 30 to 50 critical applications necessary for operations, which may include scheduling systems, lab ordering, and payroll functions. For instance, Franciscan Health, a 12-hospital system in Indiana and Illinois, reviewed over 100 applications linked to electronic health records and narrowed the list to about 60 essential tools for clinical settings. According to Charles Christian, vice president of technology and CTO at Franciscan Health, these applications ensure the facility remains operational during disruptions.

It’s vital to assess tech-dependent healthcare procedures that cannot be effectively managed through paper processes, such as advanced cancer treatments. Without identifying these procedures, continuity cannot be effectively assured.

Data Protection and HIPAA Compliance

Understanding where patient data resides is crucial for healthcare organizations to effectively respond to cyber threats. Organizations must take proactive steps to manage their data exposure, ensuring they know what sensitive information may be at risk during an attack. Howell emphasizes the federal Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency’s principle: “you cannot protect what you cannot see.” This comprehensive awareness allows organizations to notify affected patients more easily and comply with HIPAA regulations in the event of a breach.

Establishing a Healthcare BCDR Plan

A well-crafted business continuity and disaster recovery (BCDR) plan is essential for healthcare providers, aimed at ensuring continuous patient care. This plan should be centered around key clinical workflows to effectively navigate periods without technology. Christian highlights that the most challenging aspect of maintaining resilience and continuity lies in documenting and understanding these workflows.

Staff members must be trained to manage care without technological support, utilizing resources like whiteboards and paper forms for lab orders. Testing and practicing the BCDR plan is crucial, especially since many healthcare workers may lack experience in providing care during outages. Organizations need to establish clear recovery time objectives (RTO), indicating how long it should take to resume normal operations after an outage, and recovery point objectives (RPO), determining the maximum data loss allowable. For example, Franciscan Health has set an RTO target of 72 hours.

In summary, developing a minimum viable hospital and a comprehensive BCDR plan not only safeguards patient care during emergencies but also reinforces the importance of data protection in the healthcare sector. Both measures work hand in hand to ensure resilience and continuity of services in a constantly evolving technological landscape.

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