Holidays are not holidays for care facilities. Residents still need medications, meals and charting, but many vendors, managers and IT staff are away. Attackers know this. Ransomware and fraud attempts have often been timed for weekends and holidays, when response is slower and fewer people are watching.
With Thanksgiving a week away, now is a good moment for a short readiness review. Most of it takes a few hours, and it pays off any time of year.
Confirm holiday and after-hours support numbers for your IT provider, EHR vendor, phone and internet carriers, and nurse call vendor
Verify that each number works and who answers
Print an updated contact sheet and place it at nurse stations, the administrator's office and the on-call manager's folder
Name a specific manager on call for each day of the holiday period, with a backup. Make sure that person knows how to reach IT, how to activate downtime procedures and when to escalate.
If key people such as your IT contact, compliance officer or administrator will be away, designate alternates and communicate it.
Confirm that last night's backups completed successfully
Verify that at least one copy is offline or immutable
Review any alerts that have been ignored
Avoid major changes right before the holiday. Postpone non-urgent software rollouts, firmware upgrades and network changes until staff are back. If updates are essential, apply them early in the week with time to fix issues.
Test uninterruptible power supplies and generators that support network and server equipment
Check that internet failover, if you have it, actually switches over
Make sure that critical equipment closets are locked, cool and uncluttered
Review who has administrator access. Disable accounts for employees who have left and temporary staff whose contracts have ended. Confirm that multi-factor authentication is enforced for remote access.
Seasonal scams are predictable:
Package delivery notifications and shipping problems
Gift card requests that appear to come from executives
Fake e-cards, holiday bonus or schedule announcements
Charity appeals and fake invoices
Texts about suspicious account activity
Send a short reminder to staff before the holiday: if a message creates urgency, asks for money or login details or looks slightly off, report it rather than click. Remind them of the reporting method and the phone number to call.
Bring out the downtime kit and make sure it is stocked and current:
Printed resident census, medication administration records and treatment records
Blank forms and charting paper
Emergency contact lists for residents' families and physicians
Instructions for entering information after systems return
Brief the holiday supervisors on who authorizes downtime and where the kit is kept. A five-minute huddle is enough.
Holiday visiting increases foot traffic. Remind staff to lock workstations when away, shield screens from visitors and keep printed resident information out of sight. Check that doors to server rooms and wiring closets are secured.
Make sure the incident plan is easy to find and that the on-call manager knows the first three actions: isolate, call and document. If you carry cyber insurance, keep the claim hotline number with the contact sheet.
When everyone returns:
Review any alerts and tickets that accumulated
Check logs for unusual sign-ins, especially at odd hours
Install postponed updates
Ask the on-call team what worked and what did not, and update the checklist
Holiday readiness works best when it fits on one page. Put the checklist on a shared calendar, assign each item an owner and a due date and check it off during a short meeting. After the holiday, keep the same page and reuse it before the next long weekend, so preparation becomes a habit instead of a special project.
Contact sheet updated and posted
On-call schedule confirmed
Backups verified
No major changes scheduled
Accounts reviewed
Staff phishing reminder sent
Downtime kits stocked
Incident plan accessible
UnityCare IT supports healthcare and senior-living clients around the clock and can help you prepare a holiday readiness plan tailored to your facility, including contact sheets and downtime kit reviews.
Call or text: 405-285-3845
New customers: start@unitycareit.com
Existing customers: support@unitycareit.com
Address: 2524 N Broadway Ste 554 PMB 947974, Edmond, Oklahoma 73034