An outage plan stored only in the system that has stopped working is hard to use. Before the next interruption, check whether reception, the practice manager and the clinical lead can find the instructions and contact the right people.
The RACGP's sixth-edition response-planning guidance includes testing plans for unexpected disruption, including IT outages. The practical question for your team is what they would do with the systems and people available that day.
Start with a discussion, with systems left running
Choose one interruption to talk through: reception cannot reach the booking system, for example. Use a scheduled team discussion and fictional appointment details. There is no need to disconnect equipment or interrupt patient care to discover a missing contact number.
Ask reception to find the current plan and explain the first action. Then ask the practice manager and clinical lead what they would need to decide next. Record unanswered questions rather than improvising a new procedure during the exercise.
Check the plan is reachable
Confirm where an authorised team member can find these details if normal email or shared files are unavailable:
- The person coordinating the response, and their backup.
- The IT, internet, phone and clinical-software support contacts relevant to the interruption.
- The approved way to communicate with staff and patients.
- The clinic's instructions for recording and later reconciling work during an outage.
Keep any offline copy controlled and current. The clinical lead decides what care can safely continue; an IT recovery estimate cannot make that decision for them.
Test the handoff between providers
Phones, internet, booking software and local computers may have different support owners. Ask each provider what they handle, how a fault reaches them and what information they need.
If internet access fails, confirm with the phone provider whether calls can still reach reception and how an authorised person would change routing. Treat backup connections and alternate access as things to verify, not capabilities to assume.
Any later technical test should have an agreed scope, timing and rollback with the affected providers. Keep it separate from the team discussion.
Turn the gaps into specific follow-up
Give each unresolved item an owner and a review date. A useful outcome might be a corrected contact, an accessible instruction or a provider-confirmed test of one recovery step.
The ACSC's incident-planning guidance, reviewed in October 2026, also recommends clear responsibilities and testing the response. A discussion shows whether instructions make sense; a separate restoration test is needed to establish whether the relevant backup can be restored.
CRYPTON can discuss the agreed IT support and recovery-planning responsibilities around your clinic. See managed IT for medical centres, or use the clinic continuity guide to prepare your questions.