Perhaps the greatest fear of physicians and staff members is the possibility of losing data somewhere in the electronic sphere. The fear certainly has crossed the minds of the 12 physicians at Family Practice of Central Jersey, Freehold, N.J., who rely on an electronic medical records system from NextGen Healthcare Information Systems, and a number of other administrative systems.

As director of network development, Ed Ciafardini knew that it was up to him to calm the physicians' nerves. "Everything that we do is dependent on the data in the computer systems," he says. "So, I know that it is really important to make sure that our electronic data storage is safe and secure."

To meet that goal, Ciafardini developed a data back-up and recovery plan, which is required by the security regulation. "We look at everything every day and do [a back-up] at night that just runs automatically," he says. "After the back-up runs, we then capture all of the data on tape." 

A recovery server is housed in another location. So, if need be, Ciafardini can take the back-up tapes to the server and have the practice up and running in a matter of minutes.

Ciafardini, however, takes the data back-up even further. He has the system set up to run transaction log files every hour. As a result, if the system crashed during the day, he could provide up-to-the-second back-up with the transaction log files - and all of the previous data would be accessed through the back-up tapes running on the data recovery server.

Tip 7: Know your limitations

While some larger practices such as Family Physicians can rely on a systems administrator's information technology knowledge to manage the electronic data storage process, some practices simply don't have the human resources to manage complicated data management and storage operations.

For example, Sonja Mason, a self-described computer neophyte, knew that she needed to do something to address electronic data storage, but she had no idea where to start.

"We just started to automate but I knew we needed to have some sort of electronic back-up. Because we don't really have the computer expertise in-house, however, it needed to be easy," says Mason, who works as the practice manager at Eastside Gynecology, a solo practice in New York.

To address the issue, the practice is using an online data storage system from Amerivault. The system makes it easy for Mason to safely and securely take care of electronic storage issues - without having to know the ins and outs of the technology per se.

Aaron Sako, an optometrist who practices in a five-doctor practice in Laguna Hills, Calif., also didn't want to have to rely on staff to manage the data storage process. So the practice has adopted an easy-to-use online data storage solution from DataHEALTH. 

"We used to download everything onto a disk every night," Sako says. "But we just did not want to have to rely on staff to perform the download each night. This automated solution is simply more reliable."

John McCormack last wrote about wireless technologies in the April issue. He can be reached via editor@physicianspractice.com.

This article originally appeared in the June 2005 issue of Physicians Practice.