September 26, 2011 John Degaspari
article
CIOs are hard at work coming up with the most effective and affordable strategies for protecting electronic data as their hospitals move forward on electronic medical records. While the rise of cloud computing and declining network costs are offering new opportunities in dealing with potential disasters, many find there is no substitute for good planning and constant testing.
September 7, 2011 John DeGaspari
article
Disasters can strike at any time, and are always unexpected. But planning for disasters is more than a matter of what goes on in the hospital’s data center. In the end, it is the hospital’s staff that must work as a team to set things right after a disaster strikes. And that means putting in place operational procedures, workarounds, and prioritizing various department functions that constitutes a business continuity plan.
September 1, 2011 John DeGaspari
blog
Natural disasters have been on a lot of people’s minds lately, most recently, on the East Coast, anyway, as Hurricane hit land last week and caused devastation to cities and towns in its path. According to a report in the New York Times, total damage inflicted by the storm could reach $7 billion, based on an early estimate by Kinetic Analysis Corp., Silver Spring, Md.
August 25, 2011 John DeGaspari
blog
I recently had an opportunity to speak with Charles E. Christian, CIO of Good Samaritan Hospital in Vicennes, Ind., regarding the steps his hospital is taking to prepare itself for natural disasters. Christian believes that old-fashioned brick-and-mortar infrastructure cannot be overlooked when planning for natural disasters.
March 28, 2011 Joe Bormel, M.D.
blog
A professional colleague, Stacie DePeau, MBA, PMP, and parent extraordinaire, sent a link to me last week. The link took me to an article that detailed how one company and its local Tokyo retail store management dealt the earthquake in Japan. Although some will be distracted by the feel-good marketing halo the story inspires, the account contains a check list of crisis management issues in narrative form that are relevant for every C-level hospital executive
March 23, 2011 Mark Hagland
article
The five-hospital Saint Thomas Health Services, anchored by Middle Tennessee Medical Center in Murfreesboro, Tenn., several years ago became one of the very first multi-hospital systems in the U.S. to create a fully replicated set of data archives, rather than simply a mirrored configuration, to support the continuity of its PACS and other capabilities. That organization's leaders have derived great benefit from their innovation.
February 8, 2011
blog
As many of us know, Twitter and Facebook are beginning to eclipse Google as the most valuable Web properties on the Internet. Many CIOs continue to grapple with the implications of social networking on communication within the enterprise. We are experimenting in the very early stages of using Twitter-like technology on our campus within the walls of the enterprise.
February 8, 2011 Bobbie Byrne, M.D.
blog
Like every other hospital, we have disaster drills. We have plans. We have competencies to be tested against. But then this disaster hit and the one thing happened that we did not have a great plan for—a mobile command center.
October 27, 2010 Jennifer Prestigiacomo
article
Earlier this month, the Traverse City, Mich.-based Ponemon Institute released the first of a two-part national report on data center downtime . In that report, the healthcare sector scored the highest frequency of data center downtime, with an average of three outages over the past two years, as opposed to the financial industry, which reported the lowest frequency of downtime, with 1.8 outages in the same time period. Larry Ponemon, Ph.D, chairman and founder of the Ponemon Institute, in an e-mail interview, recently shared with HCI Associate Editor Jennifer Prestigiacomo his views on how healthcare technology growth is outpacing what legacy hospital data centers can deliver.
August 9, 2010 Jennifer Prestigiacomo
article
After Hurricane Katrina left death and destruction in its wake, Mississippi learned the value of the electronic health record, as physician practices that weren’t entirely flooded, dried their paper records on the sidewalk. Out of this tragedy sprung the hope of the Mississippi Coastal Health Information Exchange. James S. McIlwain, M.D., CEO and President, IQH & Co-Chairman of the Mississippi Health Information Infrastructure and Task Force Grant Administrator for the Mississippi Coastal Health Information Exchange, spoke with HCI associate editor about what challenges he and his team have been facing trying to put together the pieces of this coastal health information exchange.
April 28, 2010 Joe Bormel, M.D.
blog
It’s a powerful visual: A nest full of chirping birds asking to be fed and you have to try to spread the limited amount of resources to each. Who gets fed? Well the loudest Chirp of course! The problem with this approach is that the requirements and strategy of the organization does not always match the loudest voice.
October 27, 2009 Kate Huvane Gamble
article
Terry Evans On Aug. 18, 2009, the scenario every CIO dreads became a reality for Chuck Podesta when Fletcher Allen Health Care suffered an outage
