In the healthcare industry, where every second counts, maintaining access to critical patient information is paramount. Yet, hospitals and clinics face inevitable IT system downtimes due to maintenance, upgrades, or unexpected outages. During these periods, delays in critical tasks, patient safety risks, and financial losses are just a few of the potential impacts. One of the most crucial challenges is how to continue delivering high-quality patient care without access to electronic health records (EHRs) and other essential data. Lexmark Healthcare’s Downtime Assistant offers a robust solution to help healthcare providers minimize downtime and ensure operational continuity.
How Does the Lexmark Downtime Assistant Work?
When it comes to managing information, hospitals and healthcare providers are faced with quite a challenge. Healthcare is among the most information intensive industries, with complexities abounding in size and scope. It goes without saying that information continuity is crucial, but technological disruptions are all too common and can keep clinicians from performing their primary tasks: providing the highest level of patient care possible.
Lexmark’s Downtime Assistant is a device-based healthcare technology solution that leverages Lexmark MFPs to ensure that healthcare providers and clinical staff can continue to provide the level of care patients deserve, even when systems or networks are down. With Lexmark Downtime Assistant, the reports, forms and checklists needed during downtime are stored on a central file share. The Downtime Assistant app constantly refreshes reports from the electronic health record (EHR) system or other key applications and stores them on the MFP hard drive for easy, secure access during downtime. Document uploads and overwrites occur automatically throughout the day, so updated forms and information can be accessed anytime. Downtime Assistant complements the downtime capabilities provided by EHR vendors to fill in existing gaps and ensure organizations are prepared for all types of downtime situations, including scenarios affecting applications, networks, departments and the entire enterprise.
Whether infrastructure is out of service for routine maintenance or downtime is unplanned, the Downtime Assistant allows you to:
- Automate updates to keep data and forms current, store downtime forms and data directly on your MFP, and reduce errors inherent with slow manual processes.
During downtime, lack of information access and control can impede clinician productivity and keep them from providing quality care. Manually updating critical documents is slow, inefficient and often lacks accuracy and security. Downtime Assistant enables you to automate updates and store information directly on your Lexmark MFPs for downtime availability that’s fast, accurate and secure. The most current reports, forms and procedures are automatically fed to the device from central sources, so your staff has access to the most up-to-date information. As a result, you’ll be able to increase and simplify access for fewer errors and greater continuity of care.
- Secure data storage and access.
Forms and reports are stored on the MFP’s encrypted hard disk, and can be protected by a variety of different authentication methods, including card-swipe access.
- Promote ease of use with a familiar tool that requires little training.
Downtime Assistant simplifies downtime procedures so that your clinicians can continue doing their jobs with ease. The solution makes critical forms and instructions, available directly from your Lexmark MFPs. One-touch icons, document categories and custom menus can be tailored to the needs of each work center environment for faster, simpler access, and control. With the push of a few buttons from the intuitive touchscreen, users can access the most up-to-date information with minimal training and less hassle.
- Integrate with your existing systems/processes and enhance your existing downtime investments.
Downtime situations can come in all types of shapes, sizes and situations. The Lexmark Downtime Assistant was built with the flexibility to address each Healthcare institution’s unique needs for more complete access and faster recovery. Whether your clinical information is updated daily or every 15 minutes, the Downtime Assistant works with your downtime systems and protocols to ensure your staff has access to the most up-to-date materials. Downtime Assistant also complements the downtime capabilities of your EHR vendor to fill in existing gaps and ensure you’re prepared for any downtime situation. Customizable features allow for integration with Epic’s Business Continuity Access or Cerner’s 724 Access to provide additional forms and instructions that aren’t built into those platforms natively. And, since the solution leverages the power of your existing Lexmark MFP platform, it works without requiring additional infrastructure or resources for lower costs and maximum efficiency.
Enhance Patient Care with Downtime Assistant
Different clinical departments and work environments have their own set of needs and challenges when systems are down. Be it an organizational command center, nursing unit, or ancillary department, the Downtime Assistant ensures all departments and clinicians have easy access to the most current and critical documents and can channel data to command centers instantly. Lexmark Healthcare’s Downtime Assistant is a vital solution that ensures continuity of care, providing healthcare professionals with the data they need, when they need it. By integrating this tool into their operations, healthcare providers can enhance patient safety, improve operational efficiency, and maintain compliance, even during the most challenging times.
To learn more about this essential and invaluable tool for Healthcare, reach out to the team at Parmetech! As an Authorized Lexmark Partner, we can answer all your questions. Give us a call at (800) 727-6383, email us at info@parmetech.com or fill our website contact form to have a team member reach out to you.
