Plan, drill to ensure your practice is disaster-ready
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Practices should have a plan for disasters and conduct drills to be prepared, according to a speaker at the American Society of Retina Specialists annual meeting.
J. Michael Jumper, MD, FASRS, of West Coast Retina in California, said every practice needs to set priorities to be prepared for disaster, whether it be man-made, natural or an unexpected “black swan event.”
“That includes fostering a culture of preparedness, building a workforce capacity and strengthening relationships,” he said. “That might be with the different providers that you have or the different vendors that you work with.”
Jumper said managing communications, documents, facilities and business operations before, during and after a disaster is key. This can start with something as small as having backup batteries to more complex and technical plans.
Checklists also play an important role in preparedness, he said. This includes having backup and recovery methods for electronic data, copies of important legal documents and instructions for securing patient records.
“When the water is rising in your office, you want to have something laminated that you can look at that you’re not having to pull up from your internet,” he said.
Jumper suggested that practices implement a disaster plan and conduct quarterly drills to test preparedness for different kinds of emergencies. This includes procuring a security risk analysis from an outside party, meeting with staff afterward to discuss the response and fine-tuning the disaster plan based on the results.
“You can’t be disaster-proof, but you can be disaster-ready,” Jumper said. “You need to mitigate the known risks and be somewhat prepared for those black swan events that can occur.”
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Jumper JM, et al. Disaster planning. Presented at: American Society of Retina Specialists annual meeting; July 17-20, 2024; Stockholm.
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