Office of the CIO Internal Policy & Procedure Clinical System Service Interruption Communication Procedure Purpose: In order to meet or exceed our standards of customer service, it is essential to keep end-users and IT personnel informed about the status of reported problems and the progress of problem resolution. This document describes the procedures OCIO-IS personnel should follow when clinical production systems experience unplanned downtime or service interruptions. Definitions: 1. Service Interruption: Any incident or event that results in a user s inability to access a clinical system. 2. Clinical System: Any system used by the enterprise that is critical to providing patient care. These systems include: Epic, Keane, Oacis, Cloverleaf, McKesson Horizon Expert Documentation (Clin Doc & AdminRx), McKesson Horizon Expert Orders (CPOE), McKesson Horizon Meds Manager, McKesson Horizon Patient Folder, Pathology Cerner Millennium, and Radiology PACS. 3. Service Desk: The single point of contact (2-9700) for the customer and OCIO services. The Help desk serves as the service desk during normal business hours (7:00 am 6:00 pm) and Operations serves as the service desk after hours (6:00 pm 7:00 am). 4. Extended Service Interruption: Any downtime or loss of critical functionality to a clinical system that is expected to last for more than 1 hour. Policy: As part of the customer service request process, the OCIO on-call person is expected to respond appropriately to clinical system service interruptions and communicate effectively with others, as outlined in the following procedures. Procedure: Below are the steps that shall be followed when an unexpected significant service interruption occurs. Please refer to the Clinical System Service Interruption Communication Workflow Diagram in Appendix A. The procedure was created using the following communication timelines: COMMUNICATION TIMELINE o 30 minutes from downtime start If system is still down, OCIO director/manager is notified o 45 minutes from downtime start If system is still down, communications coordinator has been notified and conference call initiated Clinical System Service Interruption Communication Procedure, page 1 of 5
o o Within One Hour of downtime start Clear instructions sent to end users with downtime procedures and specific downtime information The communication timeframe decided on during the conference call will be maintained until the all-clear. After each update, the nursing informatics staff will update the end users. 1. An incident is reported to the service desk. The following is a list of ways the incident can be reported to the Service Desk. a. Customer (End user or Nursing Informatics) calls 2-9700 to report the incident. b. Notification from a monitoring system, i.e. Big Brother, Cloverleaf Connection Alerts, etc. 2. The Service Desk will use Remedy to dispatch incident notifications to the appropriate OCIO on-call person. Remedy sends a page to the on-call person s cell phone or pager. 3. The Service Desk will contact Nursing Informatics and let them know that a particular system is down. The Service Desk should also let NI know which team is currently working on the call. Nursing Informatics can send a desktop alert or mass page to let the users know that OCIO is aware of the problem and assessing the situation. 4. Within 15 minutes of receiving a Remedy service request, the OCIO on-call person will do the following. a. Notify the Service Desk that the service request has been received. Notification can be made by email, ocio-is-operations@musc.edu, or by phone, 876-5001. b. Contact the customer identified in the Remedy service request. 5. If the Service Desk does not receive a response in 15 minutes, then the service request will be escalated using the following escalation procedure. a. Call on-call person s cell phone. If no response, call home or secondary phone number. b. If can t reach on-call, then call the Team Leader s Cell and Home phones. c. If no response from Team Leader, call the Manager. d. If no response from the Manager, call the Director. 6. The OCIO on-call will assess the situation. Based on the Assessment, the OCIO on-call will do the following: a. If the downtime can be resolved within a few minutes or by simply rebooting/restarting the system, proceed to get the system up and running. Notify the Service Desk by phone when full functionality has been restored. b. If the system will be down for an extended or unknown period of time then notify the Service Desk and his or her Team Leader/Manager. The following information needs to be provided. i. The system/application that is down. If multiple systems are down, provide a list of the applications. ii. How are the users affected. Is the system totally down or is functionality missing. iii. The estimated time the system/application will be back to normal functionality. Please provide the best guess. Clinical System Service Interruption Communication Procedure, page 2 of 5
c. For extended downtimes, the Service Desk needs to be updated every 30 minutes. Updates can be either by phone or email and can be provided by either the on-call or Team Leader/Manager. 7. The Service Desk will need to facilitate the communication to the end users by performing the following steps. a. Contact Nursing Informatics and provide them the updates from the OCIO oncall. Nursing Informatics will send desktop alerts and/or mass pages to communicate with the end users. Nursing Informatics need to be provided the following information. i. The system/application that is down. If multiple systems are down, provide a list of the applications. ii. How are the users affected. Is the system totally down or is functionality missing. iii. The estimated time the system/application will be back to normal functionality as provided by the OCIO on-call. b. Change the announcement on 2-9700 with the information provided by the OCIO on-call in step 6. Nursing Informatics can also help with creating the message. 8. For an extended service interruption, the OCIO on-call needs to notify his or her Team Leader or manager within 30 minutes of the service interruption notification. The Team Leader will coordinate communications with the on-call and anyone that needs an update on the service interruption. a. The Team Leader needs to notify their Manager and provide an update of the situation. b. If the manager can t be reached, then he or she needs to call their Director. c. If the Director can t be reached, then he or she needs to call the Director on-call. The Director on-call can be reached by paging simon pager 20652. d. If no one can be reached, the Team Leader needs to contact the MUHA Communications Coordinator as outlined in step 9. 9. Once notified of the extended service interruption, the Manager/Director/Director oncall needs to notify the MUHA Communications Coordinator. Updates should also be provided to the MUHA CC every 30 minutes. Below are the ways the MUHA Communications Coordinator can be contacted. a. Call the Communications Call Center at 792-2123 and asking for the MUHA Communications Coordinator to be paged. b. Page the Simon pager, 20650. c. The Manager/Director/Director on-call needs to participate and provide updates in any conference calls that are done. 10. If the on-call person initially assigned the service request determines the service request needs to be transferred to another team, then follow the procedures below. a. The initial recipient of the service request should contact the person on call for the team receiving the transfer and verify that person will accept the responsibility of the service request. Operations can help escalate if the appropriate person can t be reached by cell phone. Clinical System Service Interruption Communication Procedure, page 3 of 5
b. If the on-call for the team to receive the service request accepts responsibility, transfer the service request in Remedy to that person. If unable to transfer the service request in Remedy because not near a computer, call Operations and they will transfer to the person that has accepted responsibility. Approved By Information Contact Revised Clinical System Service Interruption Communication Procedure, page 4 of 5
User(s) Desktop Alert Mass Page (Know of problem, assessing situation) Clinical System Service Interruption Communication Model/Workflow User(s) /Page 2-9700 3 /page 4,5 IS On-call Responds in 15 Minutes Change Message for 2-9700. 2-9700 1 Operator/Service Desk 2 Remedy Page IS On-call 6 /email Operator/Service Desk 7 /page Desktop Alert Mass page User(s) Page Team Leader Monitoring (Big Brother, Cloverleaf Connection Alerts) 8 Manager Director Director On-call Communications Coordinator 9 Conf. call within 45 minutes of downtime or Mass email) * Clinical * IS Dir/Mgr * Redcoat After each conf call, Redcoat to send page/alert, Instructions CIO Clinical System Service Interruption Communication Procedure, page 5 of 5