1. How prepared are Health Information Services for system failures due to internal disasters? Cheens Lee, Kerin Robinson, Kate Wendt and Dianne Williamson 26th September 2008

2. What if?

3. What is a disaster? ‘An occurrence that causes serious disruption or disables necessary business functions’ (Corrigan 1995) • External Disasters

4. Internal disaster definition • is any disaster or event that originates in the wider organisation (i.e. the hospital or network) or within the Health Information Service, and affects the infrastructure, staff, equipment, systems, services, normal functioning or business continuity of the Health Information Services.

5. Hardware or software malfunction Power failure Water pipe breaks Construction accidents Fire Sabotage Employee/ex-employee violence Sewer blockages Equipment failure Hazardous material leak Security breach Examples of internal disasters

6. Context of study • Risk Management • Contingency Plans • Business Continuity Plans

7. Documented disasters in Victorian Health Information Services • Warringal Private Hospital • The Royal Children’s Hospital

8. Aim of the study To investigate the level of preparedness of Victorian public and private sector hospitals’ Health Information Services in the event of system failures due to internal disasters or events that severely impede normal functioning.

9. Methodology • Combined quantitative-qualitative methodology. • Hospitals surveyed (i) a Health Information Service department (ii) a bed capacity of 80-plus admitted beds; and (iii) a manager of the Health Information Service department

10. Who responded? • 38 hospitals • 30 metropolitan; equal public and private • 8 non-metropolitan; 7 public

11. Metropolitan and rural hospitals overall questionnaire response rate, according to hospital size

12. Internal disasters experienced by the organisation within the last 10 years, according to hospital size

13. Types of internal disasters experienced by the respondents’ organisations within the last 10 years

14. Types of disaster contingency plans within Health Information Services, according to hospital size.

15. Types of scenarios provided for in the internal disaster plan(s)

16. Resource allocation to disaster planning • Equipment back-up • Staff • Procedures/equipment • Budget • Back-up Patient Master Index • Fire training

17. Health Information Services that have a back-up system in the event of an internal disaster

18. Types of back-up systems in place in the event of an internal disaster

19. Recovery plan ready to take effect following an internal disaster

20. What was interesting? • Within the last 10 years 50% of hospitals have experienced at least 1 internal disaster • Larger hospitals are better prepared to avoid and recover from internal disasters • Respondent hospitals generally rate themselves at a ‘medium’ level of preparedness

21. Thank You