Building a Disaster Recovery Plan That Actually Works When the EHR Goes Down

A plan you can execute, not a binder on a shelf

Every healthcare practice knows it should have a disaster recovery plan. Most have a document somewhere that nobody has read since it was written. The difference between a plan that works and one that fails is whether anyone has walked through it under realistic conditions. A real DRP names the critical systems, sets recovery targets, and tells a specific person what to do first when the EHR goes dark.

Rank systems and set RTO and RPO

Start by ranking your systems. Not everything is mission-critical. Your EHR and practice management platform probably are; the marketing site is not. For each critical system, set a recovery time objective, how fast you need it back, and a recovery point objective, how much data you can afford to lose. Those two numbers drive every backup and failover decision, and they force honest conversations about what your practice can tolerate.

Test it before you need it

Then test it. Run a tabletop exercise where the server is gone and ask the team to recover. You will find the missing phone number, the backup that never verified, and the contact who left the company. Fix those, run it again in six months, and your plan becomes something you can actually rely on instead of a binder on a shelf. Our business continuity and disaster recovery service builds and tests these plans for practices.

What to do next

Download our disaster recovery plan template to structure your draft, then schedule a tabletop within 90 days.

• Rank systems and set RTO/RPO before designing backups
• Name a specific owner for each recovery step
• Test the plan at least annually and after any major change