A recent study that has been conducted across 30 HNS trusts in London has revealed that 60% of the NHS trusts do not have a disaster recovery system in place. This is a staggering statistics and means that data belonging to hundreds of patients is at risk. If one of these NHS trusts who do not have an adequate disaster recovery plan and disaster recovery system in place experience a disaster, how on earth do they expect the doctors and their team to provide the medication and care needed as patient records will be inaccessible for a period of time or lost forever.
Dionne Hilton, programme manager at London NHS Commercial Support Unit, presented the results from the study and commented on why so few NHS Trusts had a disaster recovery system in place. Hilton honestly stated that they do not know and that they are trying to find out why so many do not have a disaster recovery plan in place.
Hilton stated, “That is what we are trying to find out; we are trying to help them. It is quite shocking that as many as 60% don’t have it. There was a massive range, from organisations that were doing particularly well in efficient use of their back-office systems to others not faring as well. We found overall that foundation trusts are doing better than non-foundation trusts.”
An NHS IT manager who attended the presentation stated, “I’m very surprised by this finding. We are a foundation trust and have a very robust disaster recovery system in place. I almost feel that this figure can’t be right somehow it’s so shocking.”
This sums of the whole situation very well and those HNS Trusts in London who do not have an adequate disaster recovery system in place, should start looking to implement a system immediately.
As this study was only conducted across 30 NHS Trusts in London, the need for a more widespread study across the country should be looked into as it is vital that the true extent of the problem in known. An investigation needs to be conducted in those NHS Trusts who do not currently have a disaster recovery system in place so that the more common problems if any can be tackled.
