Contingency Planning for Electronic Health Record-Based Care Continuity A Survey of Recommended Practices

The authors surveyed close to 60 U.S. health care institutions to understand their practices when their electronic health records (EHR) were unavailable. They found that 96% of institutions had had unexpected downtime in the last three years, and 70% had downtime lasting more than eight hours in the last three years. The authors conclude that downtime events are common and that most institutions did not implement comprehensive contingency plans. The authors recommend institutions incorporate the recommendations published in the SAFER Guides to minimize the effect of EHR downtime.