During these events, keeping both your primary location and your recovery location safe and secure is as important as the recovery effort itself. HIPAA requires that you set up procedures and plans to ensure that the staff in each location can do the work and are trained in the necessary security and safety procedures. It’s especially important that everyone engaged in this effort is authorized to do so.

Not every asset or system is equally important in emergency conditions. One of the more important steps HIPAA requires you to take in planning is determining which systems, applications, and data are important and prioritizing them in descending order for recovery.

Organizations behave like living things in that they are always changing and evolving. Because they do, plans must change with them or risk becoming outdated and ineffective. Nothing could be more deadly to an organization’s surviving a disaster than an outdated continuity of operations plan (COOP).

Once you defined assets, threats, and vulnerabilities, the next step is to assess risk. Performing a Business Impact Analysis (BIA) complements the risk assessment process.

When organizations experience events that cause devastating compromises to their operations, proactive planning and advance preparation are crucial elements of an effective response. While disaster recovery planning is essential for all industries, it’s critical in the healthcare field.