By Ken Bukowski/Special to Healthcare Facilities Today

If the unimaginable happened at your facility, but you had to continue business as usual, would you know what to do?

In today’s environment, you cannot afford to be unprepared. To successfully recover from a crisis, your healthcare facility needs a business continuity plan. This plan must be an integral part of your strategic operations, involving all levels of your organization. It should become a part of your mission and culture, and be a living document. 

Thanks to lessons learned from past incidents, we know that a continuity plan accelerates recovery time because actions are carefully planned and practiced in advance. The need to make decisions under pressure is minimized because the plan has already been laid out, tested and approved. 

If you do not have a business continuity plan in place, follow these steps:

• Conduct a business impact analysis: Work with all levels of your organization to understand their operations and establish the potential impact if certain resources are not available. Your security team can play a vital role in this as they work closely with all groups at your facility. Security needs a coordinated plan as they are often at the forefront of response and recovery.

• Assess and resolve gaps: From your impact analysis, it should be obvious where the gaps are. Take the time now to tie up these loose ends and then re-analyze your business impacts.

• Write your plan: When you are confident that your gaps are cared for, create your plan starting with the resources that are critical to keeping your facility operating running during an emergency. Keep safety and security top of mind as you need to protect staff, patients and visitors. 

• Communicate and practice: Your teams need to know and understand your plan and then also practice it. 

• Re-evaluate your plan: Your business operations are ever-evolving. What works in your plan today might not tomorrow. When you finalize your plan, test it. Then test it again at least bi-annually to ensure it still meets your needs.

If you have an existing plan, re-evaluate now so that your facility is properly prepared.

Ken Bukowski is vice president of Healthcare at AlliedBarton Security Services.