Doctors' offices have strict policies they must follow to protect and manage their patients' data. Veterinarians don't have to be nearly as strict with their pet patients' records, and that can lead some vet's offices to be a little lax with their data backup planning.
But the potential loss of all your electronic records could be devastating to your practice. Even if you are still keeping a lot of your notes on paper patient files, you don't want to lose what you do have. Making a plan for backing up your digital data and keeping it secure is an important thing to have in place.
Creating a Plan
The first step is to realize that you need a plan to follow if a computer hard drive does fail or your system gets infected with a virus that impacts the use of your practice's computers.
You'll want to write down this plan and keep a physical copy in a safe place. This should include:
- How to access your systems and your data. Make sure that anything that lists passwords is kept secure, such as in a locking file cabinet.
- How to restore any programs you use, such as pet patient record management. Some of these systems are online and won't necessarily be impacted by an onsite data loss, but you should include access information to these as well.
- How many and what type of hard drives or onsite storage you use.
- Who your IT professional is and how to contact them. It can be a pain to search for that information when you've suddenly noticed an issue.
Backing Up Your Data
There are many types of data services that can back up your animal patient data to an offsite location in the cloud. It's also possible to save the entire environment of your work rather than just data, so it is easy to restore. Veterinarians often don't have the time or skill to do a lot of technical work, so if that's you, then knowing you have a service in place that will do all the "heavy lifting" and quickly get the whole system back in place may make sense.
This can be a lifesaver not only in case of a hard drive failure but also if a catastrophic incident like a fire or flood impacts your hardware.
In addition, if you are not using an electronic record service, it might be time to talk to your IT professional or data recovery professional about what options are available and whether they could work for your practice. You can also talk to other veterinarians in your area or at trade/professional shows to get leads on what types of cloud-based or online systems work most effectively for small vet practices.
Keep Testing and Checking
It's vital to make sure your backup system actually works. It's easy to forget to set a time for backup or to cancel it if it is scheduled for a time when you're using the computer. You can make it part of your plan to check for timely backups every quarter, or you can talk to your IT professional about doing it for you as part of their regular maintenance.
Share