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Practice paper

Rebooting healthcare information technology downtime management

Julie Bulson, Mark Van Dyke and Nicole Skibinski
Journal of Business Continuity & Emergency Planning, 11 (1), 63-72 (2017)
https://doi.org/10.69554/RLRV4119

Abstract

Healthcare, like many other industries, has become reliant on technology to manage daily operations. Often, technology downtimes are managed within the information technology departments to ensure the technical staff can return the hardware or software to the end users as quickly as possible. However, if managed strictly through IT departments, such incidents lack critical communication components and an understanding of the impact on end users. This paper argues that such technological incidents need to be managed not just rapidly but also in conjunction with the emergency preparedness department. It presents the example of a healthcare system from the US Midwest where the IT department has worked closely with the emergency preparedness department to design a major incident management system that closely resembles the hospital incident command structure. The development and implementation of this process has improved several metrics, including time to declare (declaration of an incident) and mean time to restore (returning the technology back to the end users). This paper will describe how this collaboration between information technology and emergency preparedness has improved the impact on healthcare operations, and will highlight the metrics used to monitor success.

Keywords: IS; IT; information system; technology; emergency preparedness; downtime; continuity

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Author's Biography

Julie Bulson has nearly 40 years’ experience in healthcare and is Spectrum Health’s Director, Emergency Preparedness, with oversight of all emergency preparedness programme development. Ms Bulson has presented at several national and local emergency preparedness conferences and has co-authored multiple articles related to healthcare emergency preparedness.

Mark Van Dyke is Manager, Emergency Preparedness for Spectrum Health Hospitals. Along with overseeing emergency preparedness for eight hospitals, Mark develops and coordinates all disaster response education for Spectrum Health. Mr Van Dyke has presented at emergency preparedness conferences nationwide.

Nicole Skibinski is Manager, Information Systems at Spectrum Health, where she is responsible for service assurance. Leveraging her experience in the manufacturing environment, she applies tools and techniques in unique ways to define, document and improve IT services and processes. Nicole is an industrial engineer with certifications in ITIL foundations, business resilience and problem management. She has presented Spectrum Health’s Major Incident Management Process: The Journey from Inhibitor to Enabler at several IT service management conferences.

Citation

Bulson, Julie, Van Dyke, Mark and Skibinski, Nicole (2017, September 1). Rebooting healthcare information technology downtime management. In the Journal of Business Continuity & Emergency Planning, Volume 11, Issue 1. https://doi.org/10.69554/RLRV4119.

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cover image, Journal of Business Continuity & Emergency Planning
Journal of Business Continuity & Emergency Planning
Volume 11 / Issue 1
© Henry Stewart
Publications LLP

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