Downtime Procedures and Departmental Policies

Abstract

A critical component of clinical operations in today’s electronic world is digital healthcare information and management system (DHIMS) and picture archival and communication system (PACS) networks. While medical images are used in all clinical areas, some specialties like emergency medicine and surgery rely heavily on the availability of these data. Medical management of a patient can either stop or be put on hold if images are not available. Additionally, printing film may not be an option for facilities due to reduction of all resources associated with the printing and handling of film.

Self-Assessment Questions

• 1. Which of the following is NOT a downtime type?

  • a. Hardware failure

  • b. Network

  • c. Printer failure

  • d. Software failure

  • e. Electrical

• 2. Which of the following are to be notified of a scheduled outage?

  • a. Hospital administration

  • b. House staff

  • c. Referring physicians

  • d. All of the above

  • e. None of the above

• 3. Which of the following is a NOT a downtime due to software failure?

  • a. Virus

  • b. Driver installation

  • c. Windows updates

  • d. Video card

  • e. Corrupt file system

• 4. Which of the following is a possible technical solution to minimize downtime?

  • a. Fault-tolerance PACS

  • b. Multiple PACS workstations

  • c. Backup system

  • d. Full system backup prior to scheduled downtime

  • e. All of the above

• 5. The procedure used to outline steps to utilize a second copy of image data being stored in a separate location after a catastrophic event is an example of

  • a. Disaster recovery procedure

  • b. Incident report

  • c. Scheduled downtime procedure

  • d. Modality downtime procedure

  • e. Infrastructure downtime procedure

• 6. List several methods of communication for scheduled and unscheduled downtimes.

• 7. Describe some examples that might constitute a single point of failure.

• 8. Explain why decision criteria are necessary when considering whether to switch to a backup system during a downtime.