Hurricane season runs June 1 through November 30, and for practices in Houston, Katy, Sugar Land, and The Woodlands the IT question is not whether an outage happens but how long it lasts and what still works during it.
The short checklist, in priority order:
- Backups must live outside the metro. A backup drive in the office floods with the office. Verify that a current copy of the EMR database and file server exists in a data center or cloud region outside the Gulf Coast, and do a test restore before June, not after a storm forms.
- Know your EMR's failure mode. Cloud systems like athenaOne keep running if you can reach the internet from anywhere; server-based systems need a documented recovery target. Either way, staff need a printed downtime kit: schedules, contact lists, and paper encounter forms.
- Phones should not depend on the building. Cloud VoIP lets the front desk forward lines and work from anywhere with a laptop and hotspot, so patients calling during a closure reach a person instead of a dead line.
- Protect the hardware you leave behind. Workstations off the floor, servers shut down cleanly before landfall, surge protection and UPS units on anything that stays powered.
- Decide now who declares downtime and who talks to patients. The worst decisions are the ones made at 2 a.m. during the event.