“An HIT Solution for Clinical Care and Disaster Planning: How One Health Center in Joplin, MO Survived a Tornado and Avoided an Information Disaster”

[CC-Conrad Clyburn-MedForeSight]

Colleagues,

Thank you to MedTechIQ member Neal Neuberger for bringing this important article to our attention.

As many of you may recall, a year ago yesterday, Joplin, Missouri was hit by a catastrophic EF5 multiple-vortex tornado that caused over 160 deaths and $2.2 billion in damage.

In “An HIT Solution for Clinical Care and Disaster Planning: How One Health Center in Joplin, MO Survived a Tornado and Avoided an Information Disaster”, authors Peter Shin, MD of George Washington University and Feygele Jacobs of the RCHN Community Health Foundation describe in the “Online Journal of Public Health Informatics”; http://oiphi.org, Vol.4, No 1, 2012. how Health Information Technology (HIT) deployed in a community health center context was a crucial element of disaster and business continuity planning.

The article examines the experience of one community health center that was able to rapidly resume operation in the aftermath of the tornado based on effectively planning for Electronic Health Record (EHR) back-up and secure HIT mobile acces.

This is a useful article for anyone interested in disaster survival and recovery planning as it relates to patient records and health center data.

Highly recommended!

Read on at: http://firstmonday.org/htbin/cgiwrap/bin/ojs/index.php/ojphi/articl...

ENJOY!

CC