Research Paper on Healthcare Organizations: Strategic & Biz Continuity Planning for Adverse Incidents

Introduction

Healthcare organizations often depend on an efficient strategic plan and business continuity and disaster recovery plan to guide its activities and enables the healthcare organization to remain conducting its activities even after the occurrence of an adverse incident (Snedaker, 2013). Healthcare organization often operate to achieve specific goals and objectives, and these plans play an integral role in helping the organizations achieve them even in the face of unexpected interruptions of its operations (Epstein & Khan, 2014). Maintaining the safety of patients and providing quality healthcare is always the central emphasis of most healthcare organizations, and therefore they always strive to ensure that disaster preparedness is observed to ensure continuity of the activities. The paper seeks to explore the goals and purposes of the strategic plan and business continuity plan (BCP) and illuminate the different advantages and pitfalls of BCP. Moreover, the paper aims to construct an efficient and effective BCP and describe the various legal and ethical issues inherent in the business continuity and disaster recovery.

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Strategic Plan Versus Business Continuity Plan

The strategic plan refers to a combination of different decision-making methods that guide in making proper decisions that can then be implemented by the healthcare organizations to help in guiding the operations and the overall structure of the organization (Perera & Peiro, 2012). The main goal and purpose of a strategic plan are to ensure that the proactive measures are taken and implemented to enable the healthcare organization to address both the immediate and unexpected problems. On the other hand, the fundamental objective of BCP is to help in the identification of the vital data related to the patients and ensure that they are safely stored to help the recovery team recover them particularly if there is an occurrence of an unexpected event (Snedaker, 2013). Furthermore, the strategic plan's goal is to ensure that the success of an organization is guaranteed by helping in the formulation of an effective framework which will guide in making daily choices in the organization's operations (Perera & Peiro, 2012).

Conversely, the key purpose of the BCP is to ensure that the healthcare organizations are insulated from threats and disruptions that often impact adversely on their operations and more importantly, their profitability. Moreover, the BCP plays an integral in the healthcare organization, particularly in helping the personnel and healthcare machines to operate after a disaster occurs efficiently (Epstein & Khan, 2014). On the contrary, the primary purpose of a strategic plan is to ensure that the institutional cohesion is promoted by encouraging the commitment of the healthcare organization to achieve the set goals and objectives (Perera & Peiro, 2012). More importantly, the strategic plan helps in creating an explicit framework that gives an organization a credible corporate reputation that would assist in competing favorably in the healthcare's competitive environment (Cervone, 2017). Comparatively, BCP helps in identifying the potential impact of disruptions on the operations of the healthcare organization and utilize the information to make appropriate decisions concerning recovery strategies.

Advantages of Business Continuity Plan (BCP)

Business continuity plan plays a critical role as a strategy used by many companies, especially in healthcare for recovery. BCP enables organizations to prepare in prior, the procedures and process for coping with unanticipated events (Snedaker, 2013). For instance, BCP assists in the preparation to deal with emergencies. The BCP has numerous benefits including the following: it helps in maintaining the business operations in the period of and after the incident, helps in the rapid recovery of the activity after the occurrence of the event, reduces the cost and period of the disruption, as well as mitigation the risks associated with the incidents and the financial exposure (Epstein & Khan, 2014). BCP also help in safekeeping the organizational reputation, building customer trust and confidence, as well as confidence within the organization. Finally, it ensures conformity to the legal requirements and helps in saving people's lives in case of dangerous incidents.

Pitfalls of BCP

The execution of the BCP process is usually tedious, and therefore it requires the professional capacity to implement. Again the organization should recruit qualified staff, and the more significant challenge is that business cannot invest heavily in the preparation of unforeseen threats, but can instead wait to see. The use of the incident command system is time-consuming and costly. This leads to diverting funds that could have been used in the operation of the business (Epstein & Khan, 2014). Again most of the organizations fail due to poor management of the business continuity plan through lack of skills, and poor evaluation techniques employed by the personnel handling the system. Hence there is a lack of competency in establishing the unforeseen incidents, and ultimately leading to the regret of the aftermath (Epstein & Khan, 2014). Finally, death may occur as a result of dangerous events like fire, building collapse in a situation where insurance cove is not captured, as well as due to the lack of enough testing on the possible outcome.

BCP Objectives

The plan objectives include the following:

• The plan has an objective to serve as a guide in the process of recovery after the occurrence of the unforeseen incidents in healthcare.
• The plan also helps in the identification of the temporary operational activities which are required in the period of the interruption (Cervone, 2017).
• The plan seeks to identify the resources and the procedures that are required to aid the recovery of the healthcare organization after the incident.
• The plan has an objective in the identification of the event stakeholders such as the patients, the vendors, and other important people who should be notified in case of the incident occurrence (Snedaker, 2013).
• Assist in averting the confusion which may be experienced during the incident through testing, documenting, and reviewing of the recovery measures.
• The plan has to identify alternative sources of resources allocation and supplies.
• The plan helps in documenting the safeguarding, the storage, and the retrieval of the vital health records.

Threat Analysis

In a situation where the EMR system is linked to a network, every individual connected to the network can easily get access to the network, thereby enhancing chances of revealing the medical data to the third party (Cook, 2015). Besides that, when a third party illegally get access to the network, the destruction may be increased. On the other hand, the disadvantage of banning network back-up should be measured. Similarly, if the back-up line has no connection to the network and the medical data is not backed up mechanically, the operators may complete additional storage processes and incur extra expenses (Snedaker, 2013). In the event of delayed information, data can be omitted, and the information may be destroyed in the storage process. Ultimately, such situations may threaten the stability, reliability, and the efficiency of the system.

Solution Designs

The solution design ensures that the document used in the designing of emergency that includes the back-up, notification of the related officials, clearing of the site and optional location qualification, and the processes to be followed in case of a catastrophe, should be maintained for better solution design in EMR (Epstein & Khan, 2014). More importantly, the healthcare organization should be well equipped with samples of disaster recovery so that every individual is better learned based on the solutions (Cook, 2015). A practical BCP is accessed by information technology based on the organizational role to train workers on methods followed in case of the occurrence of the incident.

Implementation

Despite the challenge in the implementation of an EMR system, it is always an essential aspect in the construction of an efficient BCP. Implementation encompasses communicating the plan to every individual in the healthcare organization to keep them abreast of the plan (Snedaker, 2013). Moreover, effective implementation will involve identifying the inherent risks and potential problems that can adversely affect normal operations by executing risk assessment. Also, the BCP will be implemented through conducting critical analysis on the period that can be taken to restore the activities of the organization in the event of a disaster (Cervone, 2017). Furthermore, at this step, the design will be important to help in the implementation where mitigation of risk and strategies concerning recovery will be developed to protect the patients, personnel and the healthcare organization at large (Cook, 2015). More importantly, at the ultimate level, the BCP will be weighed against the existent regulations and conduct crisis simulation to ascertain whether the developed plan will meet the objectives of the healthcare organization.

Testing and Acceptance

Documentation of strategies, the duration of testing and more importantly, the condition for disaster discovery is vital in ensuring EMR efficiency (Cook, 2015). It is instructive to note that recovery strategies are always subjected to testing through elaborate drills where the healthcare organization's personnel are always the key participants. Testing the BCP will enable the creators of the plan to conduct an assessment on the viability of the plan and hence will allow them to make the required adjustments to improve its effectiveness (Snedaker, 2013). More often than not, the result obtained after testing is thoroughly analyzed and documented to ensure that the plan is appropriately aligned with the healthcare organization's objectives. Moreover, testing BCP will make the organization to gain a deep understanding of the business continuity plan and encourage them to adopt an acceptable strategy. Testing plays an integral role in identifying the pitfalls of the plan and evaluate to root out such deficiencies (Cook, 2015). Disaster recovery planning helps in the healthcare organizations that maintain an EMR system in determining and ensuring business continuity after the unforeseen disaster strikes.

Maintenance

The EMR system maintenance concerning the business continuity and disaster recovery plan will help to create records to ascertain the effectiveness of the plan. Constant review and reference of the adjustments made help in conducting a frequent inspection of a disaster recovery plan and the overall maintenance of the BCP (Cook, 2015). Healthcare organizations often involve the disaster recovery department in maintaining and implementing the created plan. It is worth noting that, the healthcare organization, in their effort to maintain efficient BCP, should embrace contemporary information that would ensure that quality healthcare is provided (Cervone, 2017). Accuracy of personal information of all patients and other personnel within the healthcare organization is always important in maintaining an efficient BCP, and this can be promoted by keeping updated records (Cook, 2015). Proper maintenance of the plan will help in addressing the key problems of EMR and assist in the efficient recording of physician-generated data which will ultimately help provide quality healthcare.

Legal and Ethical Issues

In BCP, the ethics are about having proper knowledge of the variation between the right thing to do in healthcare and what the healthcare organization itself has the right to do. The most key aspects of what a succ...