A great "Lessons Learned" from the recent events in the Midwest on a very
simple scale from *the Disaster Resource Guide *
http://disaster-resource.com/newsletter/subpages/v242/meettheexperts.htm

Now, on a more personal note, something many may not think of....related to
'things electronic'... in the days before my current 'gig' , I was a
Conslutant (no, it's NOT misspelled! =) )  for 8 years, main focus was
disaster preparedness, prevention, continuity planning, vital records
programs, process re-engineering, right?

SO... yesterday afternoon, I took my daughter to a Dr's appt... we get there
and there was a sign on the door "Closed and all Appts canceled- power
outage"  Coincidentally, one of the Drs was leaving the office.... and I
asked her "Why didn't you contact your patients to let them know?  I just
drove over 20 miles in 100 degree heat to get here!"

She said "Well, all of our patient info and appointment calendar are on the
computer, so we couldn't access them "

So I asked her "What, you don't have a UPS backup for power that allows you
to save work in progress or or print files prior to a complete shutdown?"

She says "Not anymore... since we wet to electronic capture of records in
the office, everything is run off of a server and the UPS was too expensive,
we would have to have a generator to provide enough power to support it"

So I suggest to her "A simple continuity plan here would be to have a
printed log of patient info (contacts and names at least) that you run
monthly, and on a daily basis, printing a patient/appointment log for say
the balance of days of the current week.  That way you could at least
contact the patients with pending appointments for that day and maybe the
next, right? "

She says, "Yes, maybe but our phones didn't work either so how would we have
done that?" And I pulled out my cell phone and wagged it at her...

Sigh.... technology is making smart people dumber as the days go on....

Now, with this being a medical practice I know there are additional issues,
like the printed list would have to be securely destroyed, as would the
appointment list, and the cell phone would have to belong to one of the
Doctors (or the office) and be PIN protected... but what about other
businesses? A hair or nail salon, a restaurant, a martial arts studio, a
gym, whatever... if you have appointments or scheduled classes wouldn't you
want to have some way to contact people rather than inconvenience them?

What about your own HOME situation?  Do you have an address book any longer,
or is it on the computer?  Do you have a printed or (gasp!) handwritten list
of necessary contacts in the event of a power outage?  Are you able to
download a list of all the numbers you have stored in your cell phone and
print those out, or backup the contents of your SIM card??  I know our
service provider has the option that allows us to backup our SIM cards and
we have done it once, but the way people "roll" these days, when someone
calls you, or you ask for their number, typically you key it into your cell
and upload/save it on the fly, right?  So the only place it exists is
there... and now that most phone bills don't send a hard copy listing of
calls with the bill, the only way to find something is to go on-line and
look for it if your phone takes a <r@p on you!

Amazing how dependent we've become on technology, and although we ALL SHOULD
KNOW this kinda stuff to ensure we don't lose control of our information,
we've also gotten so complacent we probably just don't think about it...

Larry
-- 
Larry Medina
Danville, CA
RIM Professional since 1972

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