In a skilled nursing or assisted living community, the building is staffed every hour of every day, including holidays. A system failure on a holiday morning is just as disruptive as one on a Tuesday, but the people who normally fix it may be away. Planning IT coverage for holidays and weekends is a matter of resident safety and staff confidence, not just convenience.
Not every issue needs a holiday response. Agree in advance on what warrants a call, in language staff understand.
The EHR or eMAR is unavailable or unusably slow
Internet or phone service is down
Nurse call, door controls or other safety-related systems are affected
Signs of ransomware, such as encrypted files or ransom notes
A suspected data breach or lost device with resident information
Printer problems with workarounds
Requests for new software or equipment
Slow computers that remain usable
Publishing this list prevents both over-calling and under-calling.
People in the middle of a crisis should not need to figure out whom to call. Create a one-page escalation sheet:
The first call: the support provider's 24-hour emergency line
The second call: the administrator or on-call manager
Backup contacts if the first does not respond within a stated time
Vendor contacts for the EHR, phone system, internet provider and nurse call vendor
Include account numbers and any verification information, so support staff can reach someone quickly. Post it at nurses stations, on the supervisor's phone and in downtime binders.
Ask your IT provider for their holiday schedule, and specifically:
Is the emergency line staffed by a person or an answering service?
What are response targets on holidays?
Are technicians available to go on site, or only to work remotely?
Are there extra charges for after-hours or holiday work?
How will they contact you about problems they discover through monitoring?
Make sure the answers match your needs. If you rely on a single in-house person, plan for who covers when that person is off.
Support cannot always fix a problem instantly, so staff need downtime procedures.
Keep printed copies of current resident lists, medication records and emergency contacts, updated on a regular schedule.
Store paper forms for documentation on each unit.
Train staff on how to use them, including how to enter information into the system later.
Make sure at least one working, non-network phone is available.
These steps also help meet emergency preparedness expectations in CMS requirements for long-term care facilities.
In the days before the holiday, ask your provider to:
Verify that backups are completing
Confirm that critical systems have available storage and no pending failures
Review monitoring alerts and fix any recurring warnings
Complete updates early, avoiding changes right before time off
During an outage, uncertainty creates stress. Designate someone to provide updates to staff at regular intervals, even if the update is that work is ongoing. Tell people what to do in the meantime, not just what is wrong. After the issue is resolved, send a short note describing what happened.
When the holiday is over, review any calls received, how quickly they were handled and what could improve. Update your escalation sheet and contact numbers. Treat each holiday as practice for larger events such as storms, when IT problems and emergencies often arrive together.
UnityCare IT provides helpdesk and monitoring support for healthcare organizations, with defined emergency procedures for after-hours issues. If you would like help creating an escalation sheet or testing your downtime procedures, we are glad to assist.
Call or text: 405-285-3845
New customers: start@unitycareit.com
Existing customers: support@unitycareit.com
Address: UnityCare Technologies, 2524 N Broadway Ste 554, PMB 947974, Edmond, Oklahoma 73034-4172