In Part I of our blog series on Disaster Recovery, we discussed why DR is no longer enough in the healthcare industry. Today we’d like to focus on clearing up a common misconception that disaster recovery and business continuity are essentially the same thing. While disaster recovery is essential, it’s only a small piece of the larger puzzle required to plan for the continuation of healthcare operations.

In the spring of 2016, a monkey caused a nationwide power outage in Kenya, leaving the entire country without power for 15 minutes. While we don’t have many monkeys in the US, the list of potential disasters that can affect your business is nearly endless (power outages, natural disasters, broken water pipes and of course human error). Now that healthcare records are electronic, it’s important that the industry look beyond disaster recovery and build a full business continuity plan to remain fully operational in the event of a disaster.