Disaster plan can safeguard your practice, records

Practice Management. By Julie A. Jacob, AMNews staff. Oct. 22/29, 2001.

If you woke up one morning and discovered that your office had been damaged or destroyed, would you know what to do to get your practice quickly back up and running?

While the Sept. 11 attacks brought disaster planning to the forefront, calamity from natural disasters has always been a possibility.

If a disaster did destroy your office, as a physician and small business owner, you would need to figure out a way to contact your employees, arrange for alternate care options for your patients and make sure that your practice's medical records and financial data were safe.

About 25% of small businesses that shut down due to a disaster never reopen, said Diana McClure, consultant with the Tampa, Fla.-based Institute of Business and Home Safety, a nonprofit insurance industry initiative.

Nonetheless, few small businesses have developed plans to deal with disasters that disrupt or shut down their business, said Patricia Thorp, president of Thorp & Co., a public relations firm in Coral Gables, Fla., that specializes in crisis management.

"It's odd how many employers don't even have the most basic things like having the phone numbers of their employees [outside the office]," said Thorp.

It's also important to keep copies of medical records, financial information and other important records stored at a location away from the office, said McClure.

Doing so can mean the difference between getting your practice up and running quickly and having to spend weeks reconstructing records and data. When the corporate headquarters of Empire Blue Cross Blue Shield was destroyed in the World Trade Center attack, for instance, the company was able to resume business right away because Empire's claims processing and member information were stored at another location. [...]