Strategic Planning

Implementing the best business strategies in the healthcare industry. By Kevin Burton, Burton Asset Management, Inc.

“The real payoff is doing it right the first time and short-cycling the effort in the first place”
-Kevin Burton

How can healthcare implement business continuity and disaster recovery solutions to give maximum ROI?
Kevin Burton. I think it is important to keep in mind that the solution for these problems is in the thinking and execution of mindful planning – not technology-based solutions. This is like having the fox in the hen house when looking for the right strategies. 

My advice on ROI is to stay away from hardware and software sales people who promise any such thing. The investment you make as a healthcare organization has returns in public health and safety – there is not a traditional ROI model that can be applied to good patient care in a mass casualty disaster. You will make money, through payments from services rendered, but the real pay off is doing it right, the first time and short-cycling the effort in the first place.

What are the best strategies when implementing a business continuity plan in healthcare?
KB. An all-hazards approach that includes disaster recovery, business continuity, security and pandemic is the best strategy. Involve yourself with a company that can handle this broad spectrum of needs and then engage with hardware vendors as an informed buyer.  Clearly, any hardware or software company cannot provide a ‘silver bullet’ so you need advisory services to straighten this out and lower cost by approaching the whole challenge and avoiding duplication of effort.

By using a company with a security background you can address costs and fines associated with data breaches as you build your plans – not as a separate activity.

How can hospitals ensure data compliance with productivity?
KB. These two issues go hand in hand. A company familiar with data retention and privacy protection law can significantly lower the cost of records keeping by moving away from digital storage as soon as the law allows. Taking old patient records off line as soon as possible lowers your storage costs considerably.

How should hospitals choose the best vendors and options?
KB. The best vendors in this space are hardware and software agnostic. To be clear, you need advisory services, much like a family doctor, that can provide advice and give approaches for how to address a problem with multiple symptoms before you talk about specific treatments or cures. In the same manner, a solid advisory services team is your first step to lowering cost- not experimenting with one technology and then the next.

For healthcare executives who want low cost, high-yield solutions, the answer to all of these questions is to start with the most comprehensive, solution agnostic approach possible – the downstream saving across the spectrum of disaster recovery, business continuity, security and pandemic planning will be significant. We call this approach fusion.

Kevin D. Burton is CEO of Burton Asset Management, Inc. Mr. Burton has a broad range of experience and has helped clients address many issues to increase their IT process efficiencies or to address business process needs, staff and governance issues, and business-to-IT communication.