There is never a good time for a hospital's EHR system to be offline. System downtime, whether planned maintenance or unexpected disruptions, negatively impacts all facility workers.

Downtime interrupts streamlined processes, fragmenting care team collaboration and reverting operations to paper-based workflows. This creates delays across registration, medication administration, and discharge processes while increasing error risks.

Industry leaders attempt to limit planned downtimes, yet unplanned events like power failures or cyberattacks remove operational control. Consider a scenario: Tuesday morning at 0642 CST, lightning strikes during trauma activation and shift change, taking the EHR offline while critical patients require care decisions based on blood sugar control, renal dosing, and neurological symptoms.

Without EHR access, provider orders, test results, and allergies become unknown. The facility requires a downtime playbook to establish a command center, procedures to follow, and a communication plan providing immediate access to critical patient information across all units.

CMS SAFER Guides Measure

The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services added a new SAFER Guides measure to the Protect Patient Health Information Objective, requiring attestation from all Eligible Hospitals, Critical Access Hospitals and provider clinics participating in Medicare's Promoting Interoperability program. The SAFER Guides enable self-assessments optimizing EHR safety, with specific guidance on contingency planning.

Solution

Acmeware offers Downtime Defender, a safety net for capturing critical clinical and business information while distributing it to necessary team members. The solution includes standard reports and custom reporting capabilities maintaining patient care and workflow continuity.

If you have questions regarding the CMS SAFER Guides Measure, please contact us for a demonstration.