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For the Record is recognized as the most respected publication in the healthcare information industry and prides itself on its unmatched combination of industry credibility and a unique ability to identify and analyze emerging trends over the past 20 years. For the Record informs professionals in Health Information Management (HIM), including coders, transcriptionists, registered health information administrators (RHIAs), registered health information technicians (RHITs) chief information officers, chief financial officers, chief technology officers and directors of information systems, with articles that inspect key issues and address industry concerns in a graphically appealing style. Lang’s input was included in an article that explained how the lessons learned by the personnel at Tulane Medical Center in New Orleans during and after Hurricane Katrina may be valuable to other facilities in their disaster preparedness efforts. HIM departments across the country whose electronic health records are still incomplete must implement processes to protect and restore both paper and electronic information. Nowhere is speedy disaster recovery more vital than in a medical facility and Tulane’s response to Katrina will hopefully encourage other facilities to spend more time choosing the right disaster recovery technology for their facility. According to Lang, healthcare organizations are not ready to interview vendors and compare disaster recovery systems unless they have first taken the following two steps: - Understand your business operations and disaster recovery needs. Conduct a business impact analysis that prioritizes business functions and identifies the order in which they need to be brought up after a disaster.
- Conduct a threat assessment. Work with local emergency management to identify the site’s vulnerabilities (not just weather related but also issues such as proximity to a chemical plant and resiliency of local telecommunications).
Vendors will need the results of these analyses to recommend the most effective systems. “If a vendor doesn’t ask for this information, it probably means they don’t know what they’re doing,” says Lang.
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