Rebooting Healthcare Information Technology Downtime Management at Spectrum

Julie Bulson, DNP, MPA, RN, NE-BC, Director, Emergency Preparedness, and Burt Smith, Director, Enterprise Operations, Spectrum Health.  The information technology department has worked closely with the emergency preparedness department to design a major incident management system that closely resembles the hospital incident command structure assisting in a rapid response to IS incidents while improving communication to the organization.  The development and implementation of this process has improved several metrics including Time to Declare (declaration of an incident) and Mean Time to Restore (returning the technology back to the end users).  Julie and Burt outline the Major Incident Management System, the collaboration between information technology and emergency preparedness improving the impact to healthcare operations, and highlight the metrics used to monitor success.