1.1 This guide applies across multiple medical transcription settings in which healthcare documents are generated and stored: medical transcription departments, home offices, and medical transcription service organizations (MTSOs). Currently there is no standard disaster recovery plan in the medical transcription industry to provide guidelines for individuals, departments, and businesses to use for designing a disaster recovery plan for their medical transcription environment.

1.2 A disaster is when a sudden event brings great damage, loss, destruction, or interruption of critical services. These guidelines could assist in developing an organized response to reduce the time for loss of services, maintain continuity of workflow, and speed the overall business recovery process.

1.3 This guide supports the HIPAA Security Rule for ensuring data integrity with a contingency plan to include a data backup plan, a disaster recovery plan, and an emergency mode operational plan.2

1.4 This guide is consistent with the requirement for disaster planning and recovery procedures as stated in Guide E1959.

1.5 This guide is not intended as a disaster recovery plan for Health Information Management Departments or for an entire healthcare facility.