Nashville-based Guidant Partners, a full-service IT planning and management company, shared five data management lessons for healthcare companies from its Lunch and Learn event on Wednesday, Aug. 26, 2015.

Titled, “Create a Process: Managing and Storing Your Data in the Healthcare Industry,” co-presenters Steve Burgess, CEO of Guidant Partners, and Bowman Richards, Vice President of Richards & Richards Office Records Management, explored how the boom in data growth impacts healthcare professionals.

“For a health IT project to be successful, data management must be synchronized with the clinical workflow. This improves efficiency and quality of care, but implementation is not such an easy task. In fact, with the boom of data in today's healthcare environment, it can be daunting for healthcare organizations to tackle alone,” said Burgess. “With the right IT partner, however, healthcare organizations can start working smarter - not harder - when implementing the right IT solution.”

Five key takeaways from the event included:

• Data is imperative to healthcare organizations. Companies need to have a mirror image of all their data, especially medical records, backed up and saved remotely.
• Data can be stored in three places: workstations, local servers and backups, and the cloud. For healthcare organizations, the cloud is an increasingly preferred storage option as it provides a higher level of redundancy and security of data, driven by HIPPA.
• Recovery time and recovery point objective should both be included in a data management plan. A server crash should not be disastrous – it should merely be a pause. With a plan in place, healthcare organizations go from asking when the server will be back up and running to solving the problem and minimizing the down time.
• It’s expensive to store static data the same way that active data is stored. Understand the difference between active data, such as medical charts and records that are regularly accessed and updated, and static data that isn’t frequently modified and can be archived.
• Above all else, ensure that your data management and storage plan is HIPPA compliant. Engage your legal team when developing that plan.

“With the increasing amount of data created and stored in the healthcare industry, combined with the growing number of rules and regulations to follow, staying 100 percent compliant requires ongoing education,” said Richards. “At Richards & Richards and at Guidant Partners, we’re dedicated to continuing that educational process for local businesses, which is the primary purpose of the Lunch and Learn series.”

The next event is scheduled for Thursday, Nov. 19. For more information, go to the events section of Guidant Partners' website.