How to Holiday-proof Your Practice’s IT

We’re at the last few days of 2021 and we can’t help it, we’re on holiday mode! Yes, that includes practice owners and healthcare providers like you.

Let’s be honest. Unless it’s for a medical emergency, medical professionals like you don’t want to get pulled out of family gatherings and holiday dinners. Just like the rest of the world, you’d want your holidays to stay as peaceful and stress-free as possible, for as long as possible.

Unfortunately, the holiday season offers no exemption from IT issues and common technology problems. As a practice owner, it’s hard to take a step back and just enjoy the season when you’re not sure your office’s IT network is running smoothly and securely.

Steps to Take to Prep for the Holiday Break

Here are a few things you can do to make sure you, your practice, and your patients have a stress-free holiday season ahead.

Have IT Engineers on Call 24/7 

Whether your clinic is staying open or taking a break during the holidays, it’s important to make sure that your IT network, devices, and data are safe and secure. Unfortunately, there is no guarantee for that. 

Connectivity problems can still happen and cybersecurity threats are known to skyrocket during the holiday season. If any of those happen to your office network, you’re going to need to make sure you have experts ready to troubleshoot issues, repair devices, secure clinic data, and mitigate any damage. The best way to do this is by having IT engineers on call 24/7.

Most healthcare practices have three options for IT assistance:

• They build their own IT team. Unfortunately, this is likely the most expensive option. In Sacramento, CA, hiring an IT manager can cost you around $11,000 every month. You also need to hire at least three IT experts to make 24/7 monitoring and support possible.

• They hire on-demand IT consultants. With this option, your practice can call an IT expert or company whenever you need help. The downside is they mainly offer break-fix solutions. Their service coverage is also typically limited to business hours, so you may not get the 24/7 IT support you need.

• They partner with a managed service provider (MSP). This option means outsourcing your IT operations to a team of experts for a fixed monthly rate. Because an MSP is composed of several IT engineers, they can meet your IT needs round the clock through both remote and on-site support.

Because of its practicality, partnering with a trusted MSP that specializes in healthcare IT is the option many US medical practices are turning to. 

Healthcare MSPs such as ER Tech Pros can address your need for round-the-clock IT support throughout the holiday season. With on-site support, 24/7/365 remote support, and a dedicated account manager, you can be sure that your clinic’s IT network is looked after and properly monitored.

Ensure Your Servers Are Up and Accessible

With the emergence of healthcare technology, medical providers like you no longer have to choose between flying out with family for the holidays or staying behind and keeping the clinic open. Telemedicine solutions allow you to see patients remotely while supporting other essential clinical workflows.

However, if you want your practice to make the most of modern healthcare innovations, you need to make sure your server is running and easily accessible. The best way to do this is by shifting to a cloud-hosted server. Here are some reasons why:

• 24/7 Support. Reliable cloud hosting providers always have a team of cloud engineers ready to provide assistance and support round the clock. No need to do any troubleshooting or adjustments yourself.

• Scalability. You can easily increase or decrease your server space depending on your practice’s needs. This helps you avoid storage errors that can freeze up your EHR software and other apps while in use.

• Accessibility. Unlike on-premises servers, cloud-hosted servers do not rely on your office’s Internet service provider (ISP). So if your clinic faces ISP or connectivity issues, your servers will stay up, running, and fully accessible.

By switching to cloud-hosted servers, your practice enjoys increased savings, more flexibility, advanced cybersecurity, and better productivity. Leverage cloud technology to grow your medical practice.

Partner with a trusted cloud hosting provider like ER Tech Pros and keep your clinic running throughout the holiday season—whether you’re in the office or not.

Regularly Back Up Your Data in Secure Data Centers

For many healthcare providers, one big fear about returning from the holiday season is finding out that they had a technical hiccup sometime during the break that led to data loss. What a nightmare!

To avoid data loss in your healthcare practice, you can store your clinic data in HIPAA-compliant, cloud-hosted servers. It’s key that these servers are equipped with automatic backup and disaster recovery features.

ER Tech Pros, for example, uses a cloud backup technology called Snapshots. This solution allows us to take mirror images of your cloud servers on a regular basis and store the data in a private data center.

• Hourly Backup. A snapshot is taken at the end of every hour every day. The data is stored for 24 hours.

• Daily Backup. A snapshot is taken at 2 AM every day. The data is stored for seven days.

• Monthly Backup. A snapshot is taken at 2 AM on the last day of every month. The data is stored for three months.

In the event of a break-in, natural disaster, or cybersecurity threat, you can expect your most recent data to be backed up and recovered in less than an hour.