2012 Annual Session - Seven Things Your IT Person Should be Doing to Protect Your Practice

Computers are a key part of the modern practice's success. We rely on them in many aspects of business, scheduling, finance, treatment planning and digital imaging. Imagine walking into the office and being surprised with a day without the use of your computer. Could you function? How limited would your capabilities be? Your IT person is your liaison with your technology, and they are counted on to implement, maintain and oversee its function. How well are they doing this for you? A review of most practices turns up areas of improvement. By participating in this lecture you should be better equipped to understand and evaluate several key issues for your practice including:

• Bringing new ideas to light: There are many technologies available, new ones seemingly every week. How can a practice be expected to stay on top of them all, and know which might be highly beneficial to your specific operation? Your IT person should be actively sharing these ideas with you.
• Disaster recovery: How is the practice prepared to respond if the server dies or critical data lost or deleted? Do you have suitable backups? Are they usable? How long will it take to restore the network to operation? Who will do it, and how quickly?
• Fiscal planning: Do you plan for the expenses of technology maintenance and upgrades, or is it usually just a surprise when you learn something in the network is near death and needs to be replaced? Technology has a lifecycle, and you should be able to plan for predictable expenses.

We will discuss how to deal these issues (and more) in a practical manner, not in the abstract. You should leave feeling prepared to go back and get your own house in order.

Learning Objectives:

• Understand the key areas of interest in protecting your practice computer network
• How to identify areas of improvement needed in your practice IT environment
• Enable yourself to undertake the next steps in resolving identified issues