The service which is described as the industry’s most comprehensive hospital clinical continuity and disaster recovery solution, will address two issues: the April 2005 deadline for the final HIPAA security rule, which includes disaster recovery requirements, and greater awareness of the threat from catastrophic events such as extreme weather, earthquake and terrorist activities.
SunGard is already recognized a leader in the provision of uninterrupted access to mission critical data and systems. This partnership is therefore expected to allow McKesson to integrate SunGard’s traditional business continuity and managed services with its consulting and technical services.
Over 300 hospitals currently use McKesson technology to keep more than 750 critical systems up and running.
We have made business continuity a top priority, not just to comply with the April HIPAA deadline, but also because we have become so dependent on our electronic health records and related systems that even a short period of downtime can have a serious impact on our business, said Cathie Brown, manager of information security and business continuity at Centra Health, Lynchburg, Virginia.
Under new HIPPAA (the US Department of Health and Human Services) regulations, organizations are required to have contingency planning for responding to system emergencies. The plan is to include an applications and data criticality analysis, a data backup plan, a disaster recovery plan, an emergency mode operation plan, and testing and revision procedures.
