No Phone Service: How Would Your Practice Manage?

It doesn't take a major natural catastrophe to throw your practice's business operations into disarray. At Boone Regional Ear, Nose & Throat PLLC, it took only one well-placed leak.

Torrential rains on Tuesday, November 18, pounded the 13-year-old building housing the practice. While the building didn't flood, the combination of rain and wind pushed water through a hole in the foundation and into the practice's main phone switchbox, shorting out the circuitry and destroying all phone operations. Fortunately, Cheryl Wergin, a consultant from KarenZupko & Associates, was on the scene and played a key role in coordinating the recovery from this unforeseen disaster.

When the complete outage was discovered Wednesday morning, Wergin teamed up with two of the clinic's IT staff to craft a communication work-around. The practice, which was considering a test of Internet telephony, put the plan into action immediately, connecting the necessary hardware to enable the practice to have phone service over its high-speed Internet connection. The phone company, however, took more than 24 hours to make the changes necessary for the calls to the practice's number to be switched over to the Internet number.

The technological quick-fix didn't solve everything. For example, as of Friday morning, staff on the three floors of the practice had to use cell phones to communicate with each other, and calls couldn't be transferred over the Internet-based system the way they are over the internal phone system. But Wergin said the practice was glad to have some phone service to handle patients within hours of a catastrophic interruption of service.

Wergin says Boone Regional's problems provide lessons on disaster planning that every practice can apply:

• Think about what your practice would do if basic technology services were interrupted, and have a plan in place.

• Make SURE you back up computers daily, and store tapes off site.

• Be aware of other technology options to work around possible problems from service interruptions.

• Have someone in the practice designated to study these options and plan for emergency disruptions.

• If your practice can't have an IT person on staff, know where to get help on short notice if disruptions occur or if a work-around is needed.

As practices become more dependent on technology, planning for service interruptions will grow in importance, she notes.

Snow season is coming! Do you have a protocol for handling blizzards and office closings?

1. Does your practice have a plan in place accounting for natural disasters, power outages, etc.?

2. Is your plan “battle-tested?”

3. What's one pearl you'd share with others?