Understanding Business Continuity in Healthcare: Key Aspects and Management (Full Transcript)

Speaker 1: What is business continuity in healthcare? Business continuity highlights the step-by-step process to prevent risks which can lead to loss or disruption of services. Business continuity focuses on three key aspects, resilience, contingency, and recovery. Reducing any risk before they become a danger. Contingency. Are there measures in place to deal with an incident? Recovery. How you recover after an incident. This is solving the immediate threat so that your service can be restored and recovered. What triggers business continuity? Business continuity is usually triggered by an incident or natural disaster. Such as a security breach, equipment failure, power outage, loss of telephony, staff departure, floods and much more. How do I manage an incident? Having a business continuity management system in place will help you to navigate risks and should create good business continuity plans. Allowing your service to still perform when faced with threats. It's based on the plan, do, check, and act cycle. Plan. Understand what your business needs to operate and function and how that can continue during an incident. Do. Implement that plan and make staff aware of the new process. Check. Check. Ensure the plan and process is still up to date. Test staff on their knowledge. Check it's as robust as it needs to be. Act. If something is identified during this process such as your plan being out of date or staff not being aware of it. Act on that and update the plan or train the staff. What should I think about during my business continuity planning? Business continuity plans should include consideration of your area and the organization as a whole. There are seven pillars you need to consider. Program. This is the proactive management of your business continuity management process. People. Having a clear understanding of roles and responsibilities through raising awareness and education. Processes. Understand how the organization operates and existing processes in place. Premises. Thinking of any building, facilities, and equipment that we use to operate. Providers. A clear understanding of the organization's supply chain. Profile. Protection of the organization's image and reputation. Performance. Whilst fresh in your mind. How did you do? What went well and where can we improve? What are the NHS's legal requirements regarding business continuity? All NHS organizations have a duty to implement contingency arrangements following the business continuity framework. Which were put in place following the Civil Contingencies Act 2004 and the Health and Care Act 2022. To find out more contact the Business Continuity Manager within the Digital Governance Team at ig at gjnh.scott.nhs.uk