Emergency Department Downtime Case Study

Week 3 HIM 301

Seven Issues in Case to Plot, Unplanned EHR Downtime, Level II Trauma Center

Part one of scenario: DT at 1700 on Tuesday. Vendor on different time zone. 1 hour of

troubleshooting; try reboot, unsuccessful. More specialists from vendor called from home.

Diagnosis= database corruption.

Part two of scenario: There is no High Availability designed for this system; data must be

recovered from backups. New estimate to resolution from IT = 8-10 hours to recover.

1. Time of day/number of users: Part one= Quad. 1; Part two= Quad. 4

2. IT infrastructure affected: Part one= Quad. 2,3; Part two= Quad. 4

3. System criticality: Part one= Quad. 2/3; Part two= Quad. 4

4. Planned versus unplanned downtime: Part one= Quad. 2/3; Part two= Quad. 3/2

5. Health system complexity: Part one= Quad. 2,3; Part two= Quad. 4

6. Communication amount and methods: Part one= Quad. 1; Part two= Quad. 4

7. Ability to recover: Part one= Quad. 1; Part two= Quad. 4

$ represent Part One’s Cluster in the Downtime Determinator; * represent Part two cluster

2, 3 $$$$ 4 ******

Impact/Risk $$$

1 3,2 *

Length of Downtime/Time to Recover