More and more of a care facility's daily work travels over the internet. Cloud-hosted EHR platforms, e-prescribing, eFax, VoIP phones, telehealth visits, remote monitoring and even some door controls rely on a working connection. When the line goes down, staff may fall back to paper, calls may fail and admissions can stall.
A backup internet connection, often called redundancy, can reduce that risk. It is not necessary for every site, but for many facilities it is one of the more affordable ways to improve reliability.
The question is not how much a second line costs, but how much an outage costs you. Ask department heads:
What systems stop if the internet is down for an hour? For four hours?
Do we have a paper process, and how well does it work in practice?
Which functions affect resident safety, such as medication records, nurse call integration or phone access to emergency services?
Do we miss billing, admissions or regulatory deadlines when we are offline?
If the answers are uncomfortable, redundancy deserves serious consideration.
A common design pairs a primary connection, such as fiber or cable, with a secondary one from a different provider. The key is diversity: if both use the same buried conduit or the same upstream company, a single cut or outage may take down both.
A cellular or fixed wireless service can serve as a lower-cost secondary path. Speeds and latency are usually lower than wired service, and data plans may have limits, but it can keep essential systems running during an outage.
Low earth orbit satellite service has expanded coverage in rural areas, which is relevant in many parts of Oklahoma, Texas and Arkansas. Performance can vary, so test before relying on it for critical functions.
If possible, ask providers whether their cables enter your building at different points and follow different paths.
Two lines are not much help if a single device controls them. A proper design includes:
A firewall or router that supports automatic failover between connections
Health checks that detect a failing line, not only a complete outage
Rules that prioritize important traffic, such as voice and EHR, over less important traffic when running on a slower backup
Backup power for the network equipment, since a power outage that shuts down the router defeats the purpose
Monitoring and alerts so someone knows when the system has switched to the backup
Test failover on a scheduled basis. A backup line that has not been tested may fail when it is needed.
If your phones are internet-based, an internet outage can mean no phone service. Plan for this by:
Configuring the phone system to forward calls to mobile numbers automatically during outages
Keeping at least one analog or cellular line for emergencies, where required or prudent
Ensuring that systems tied to emergency communications are considered in your emergency preparedness planning, as CMS expects long-term care facilities to maintain communication plans
If your EHR is hosted, ask the vendor how the application behaves when your connection drops. Some have offline modes or downtime viewers. Ask also whether they can export a read-only snapshot of current medication and care plan data to a local device regularly, so staff can see key information during an outage.
Not every facility can afford a full second circuit immediately. Consider tiers:
Basic: a cellular backup router that keeps essential systems and phones running at reduced speed
Better: a second wired or fixed wireless circuit from a different provider, with automatic failover
Best: diverse physical paths, redundant firewalls and monitored failover with documented testing
Start where your risk and budget align, and improve over time.
Inventory what depends on the internet.
Write a one-page downtime procedure for each critical function.
Request quotes from at least two providers, and ask about physical route diversity.
Choose equipment with automatic failover and remote monitoring.
Test twice a year by unplugging the primary line during a planned window.
We help care facilities evaluate connectivity options, work with carriers and design failover that is tested and monitored. If you would like a simple outage-impact review, we can walk through your systems with you and recommend a right-sized approach.
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