It’s said that the health record systems of many healthcare providers are now being entrusted to the hands of information technology (IT). This could be a bit late compared to other industries that have been using digital filings and documentation for many years now. However, if your clinic, hospital, or health-related business has been dealing with your IT operations for a while now, it’s safe to say that you’ve realized that it’s not as easy as it looks.
Business downtime can happen to any company, entity, and industry. Unfortunately, even a few seconds of it can transcend thousands of dollars of business losses. Therefore, it’s practical and sound to know the right ways to minimize the cost of your business downtime. Whether it applies to your IT, equipment, utilities, or any other operational aspects, knowing how to prevent them is crucial.
Here are some practical ways to ensure decreased business downtime costs:
Consider it Consulting Services
One of the ideal ways to prevent system downtime if your healthcare business relies on IT is to hire third-party providers like what TrueNorth’s Healthcare IT consulting services offer. Keeping your medical practice current with technology is crucial to making good decisions for your doctors and patients. A medical IT consulting company can assist you in ensuring that your medical technology, networks, and hardware meet your practice’s needs. While having a completely packed house of internal IT teams can be pretty expensive, it’s best to outsource your IT needs and have remote consulting and support instead.
You can expect them to be your business partner who can ensure tighter web security to protect all your patients’ data and information. When all your systems are working seamlessly, you can improve patient care. Your health care system cannot be down at any time, but you don’t have to worry anymore when you’re already in contract with reliable healthcare IT consulting company.
Make use of Cloud Technology
Many businesses are utilizing the maximum benefits of cloud technology, and it’s time that you follow suit. This helps protect your data from disasters and outages and decreases stress and anxiety when your hardware breaks down, and you can’t boot back up. There won’t be limitations to the storage capacity, too, as cloud solutions offer wide storage ranges.
Some of your downtime risks are reduced when critical operations are hosted on a cloud server. You only need internet access and your healthcare workers can access it from any device and place. Nurses on duty don’t have to walk back and forth to their on-premise computers just to check patient records. They can access them from portable tablets, which they can carry and access while doing rounds in different patient wards.
It’s also possible to set up automatic maintenance functions as well as alerts when something is wrong. The key here is finding the safest and most reliable cloud server for your healthcare operations. Choose a storage plan that is sufficient to handle all your data.
Train your Workforce
Downtime is often caused by human error, which is impossible to avoid altogether. Nevertheless, with proper workforce training, this can be addressed and reduced. Designate a team in your human resource department who’ll be responsible for devising training programs to ensure everyone in the company is aware of daily operations and processes.
Cyberthreats should be familiarized to your employees, and you should enforce your organization’s standard IT policies and procedures. Also, ensure everyone reports even the most minor threat or risk they can find in their systems and software. Reporting them in timely situations will save your company from severe downtimes and system breakdowns.
Invest in a Backup Power Generator
Aside from cybercrimes, another aspect that generates business downtime is unanticipated disasters like storms and earthquakes. Often, these calamities will result in power outages, so it’s crucial to invest in a standby power generator for emergencies. Businesses need electricity to run computers, power tools, and other machines. You won’t be able to operate any of your healthcare equipment if you don’t have electric power. This is the most crucial aspect of your clinic or hospital.
Having a power backup generator on hand will ensure your business can continue running even when the power is out. Invest in the best quality generator brand, which has an excellent capacity to power your entire premises. Many of your patients and employees need electricity to survive and work productively.
Power outages will not only result in business losses but endanger the lives of your critical patients. Hence, always have a reliable generator in place. Ensure to inspect and maintain them regularly so they’ll be in perfect running condition all the time.
Conclusion
Your healthcare business relies on technology to operate smoothly without hurdles. Yet business downtimes can happen anytime. Whether in your IT or other aspects on-premises, you must always be prepared to handle unanticipated downtimes that can be costly. Hopefully, the tips mentioned above have shed some light on how you can reduce the costs of business downtimes.
Jason is the Marketing Manager at a local advertising company in Australia. He moved to Australia 10 years back for his passion for advertising. Jason recently joined BFA as a volunteer writer and contributes by sharing his valuable experience and knowledge.
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