Practices are required to have business continuity plans (BCPs). Making sure that these are real and tested is before an incident happens is essential. With incidents such as the recent IT outage plans would have been needed. Don’t wait until the next incident, plan, and test now.
PCC was approached to work with primary care networks (PCNs) across an integrated care board (ICB) to support development of a consistent approach to BCPs.
We met with PCN leaders to understand the nature of the locality and the challenges it faced from which a template local BCP was developed. Following the distribution of the BCP template, two face to face workshops were arranged to which all the PCNs attended. The first was to introduce the BCP to the PCNs and underline the importance of a consistent approach. It also described the way in which PCNs should, following the workshop, complete their BCP and how they could then subsequently ‘stress-test’ it. The second workshop provided an opportunity for each PCN to share with each other how they had progressed, and lessons learnt from the stress testing.
Feedback included, “The PCNs found the sessions extremely useful and reported that they found the trainer really well informed, offered good advice and was extremely engaging. They are all now looking at business continuity in a new light. An added positive is that some of the PCNs are working together to stress test scenarios.”
Business continuity planning is a must do, ensuring the plans really work is essential. Contact enquiries@pcc-cic.org.uk to book sessions for your practices or PCNs. For more information visit https://pcc-cic.org.uk/a-business-continuityreally-is-as-easy-as-abc/.
