General Surgery Coding Alert - 2016 Issue 1
Electronic Health Records: 3 Tips Help You Stay Sane If Your EHR Goes Offline
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Article Overview
This article explains how healthcare organizations can prepare for an EHR outage through downtime planning, staff training, paper-based fallback processes, and operational safeguards. It is relevant to clinicians, practice managers, compliance teams, and health information staff who need to maintain patient safety, scheduling, documentation, and billing continuity during system interruptions. The guidance is framed around real-world outage risks and general contingency planning considerations.
Why This Topic Matters
EHR outages can disrupt care delivery, documentation, and revenue cycle processes. Understanding downtime preparedness helps organizations reduce safety risks and operational disruption when electronic systems are unavailable.
Article Sections
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Create A Detailed Downtime Policy
Discusses the need for department-level downtime planning, staff awareness, and practice drills. It also introduces major areas that should be covered in an offline workflow plan.
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Patient Safety is Paramount
Covers broad patient-safety considerations for periods when electronic records are unavailable, including medication handling, allergy awareness, code status access, and test-result communication.
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Keep Operations Moving Smoothly
Addresses maintaining scheduling, documentation workflows, and paper-based backup processes so routine clinical operations can continue during downtime.
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Bills Must Remain Accurate
Focuses on protecting billing workflows during outages, including backup configuration, charge handling, and avoiding duplicate billing issues after restoration.
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Maintain Backups
Describes the importance of maintaining current paper forms and emergency supplies as part of broader contingency readiness.
What You Will Learn
- How healthcare organizations approach EHR downtime preparedness
- What broad elements are commonly included in an offline workflow plan
- How patient safety considerations factor into EHR contingency planning
- Why paper-based documentation and scheduling backups matter during outages
- How billing continuity and backup readiness are addressed when systems fail
Who Should Read This
- Clinicians
- Practice managers
- Health information management staff
- Revenue cycle staff
- Compliance and operations teams
- Hospital administrators
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