Hurricane Sandy hit the New Jersey coast on Oct. 29, 2012 and devastated the coastal areas of New Jersey and New York. I remember city streets, tunnels, and buildings being flooded, including the lobby of the building where I was recently hired to work in my first editorial role. For many New Jerseyans, seeing images of Hurricane Harvey and Hurricane Irma's floods in Texas and Florida brought back memories of Hurricane Sandy. The destruction of Hurricane Maria is heartwrenching—a storm so powerful that it's hard to imagine if life will ever be the same in Puerto Rico.
At the local level, healthcare providers in all of these affected areas will have to assess damage and retrieve what they can from the floodwaters. Let’s hope for their sake—and the sake of their patients—that patient records are not among the losses. For dental practices with valuable patient data, it could be potentially devastating if they didn’t have a proper backup strategy.
Fortunately, Wired has reported that more doctors have been moving to electronic records since the devastation from Hurricane Katrina in 2005. At the time of Katrina it is estimated that only about a quarter of doctors in the U.S. reported using electronic medical records (EMRs), while at the time of Sandy, nearly half of the country’s healthcare systems had adopted EMRs. Now, amid the devastation of this hurricane season, it is estimated that approximately three-quarters of providers have EMRs.
While having EMRs is important, it is crucial that your data is stored both at your office on an external hard drive, as well as at a protected offsite location, such as in the cloud. Also it is important to keep in mind that in a time of crisis, the true value of any backup strategy is being able to restore your data when you need it for business continuance—not just having your data stored on a device or in the cloud. That’s why it is so important to have your data backed up with a partner you can trust to help you recover quickly.
Consider a TechCentral Hybrid Backup Service
Water damage is only one event, among many, that can lead to loss of patient data. Human error, theft, fire or cybercrime, including ransomware, are just a few others. The risks are real, and the importance of data backup and quick recovery cannot be stressed enough.
Don’t be fooled into thinking that all cloud (or local) backup and restoration solutions are equal. The Henry Schein TechCentral Hybrid Backup Services are designed specifically with the dental market in mind, to provide multiple points of recovery in any of the aforementioned scenarios. It’s a single solution that takes a coordinated approach to managing backup copies of your critical data by using AES-256 bit encryption while the data is stored locally and in the cloud. In addition, the TechCentral team will monitor your daily backup and assist your practice in performing restoration of files and data as needed.
When used as part of a comprehensive data security program, TechCentral Hybrid Backup Services help protect your practice. Learn more and request a free network assessment by visiting https://www.hstechcentral.com/dps/blog/hurricane.
This article was paid for by Henry Schein TechCentral. Certain components of the Hybrid Backup Services are provided by third parties. HSI is not responsible for, and expressly disclaims, all liability for damages of any kind arising from the use of those third-party products or services.