Effects of Electronic Medical Record Downtime on Patient Safety, Downtime Mitigation, and Downtime Plans

Background

Continuity of patient care has become increasingly dependent on a continually available EMR system. In recent years, technology has been injected into virtually every aspect of patient care. Each of these separate systems introduce the potential of another electronic point of failure that can affect the availability in whole or in part of patient care systems. “Unexpected information technology (IT) downtime occurs more and more often with widespread adoption of electronic systems in healthcare” (Campos et al., 2015). As patient care becomes more dependent on these diverse electronic systems, clinical staff (e.g. physicians and nurses) are also becoming more sensitive to the availability of systems in patient care areas as systems support patient care. Technology can make patient care safer; however, patient safety threats arising from health information system use (e.g. system outages), highlight the need to consider the unintended consequences of integrating healthcare delivery and technology (Kashiwagi et al., 2016).