Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery in a Tornado Zone

Tornadoes create risks that differ in key ways from those in a hurricane area. Cancer Treatment Centers of America showcases a study BC/DR plan for dealing with tornadoes

By Joan Goodchild, Senior Editor

September 03, 2009 — CSO —

Business continuity planners in tornado alley have much in common with those in hurricane areas -- but also key differences. Tornadoes have smaller funnels, but can appear in groups, may feature dramatically higher winds, and can strike with far less warning than a major hurricane typically provides. Good BC/DR planning must take those differences into account in everything from employee and facility safety to network uptime.

Also see: BC/DR Challenges in a Hurricane Zone

Cancer Treatment Centers of America literally has lives on the line if something goes wrong with their business continuity plans. That's why Chad Eckes, chief information officer of the Schaumburg, Illinois-headquartered organization, believes there is no room for complacency. Keeping things running smoothly 100 percent of the time is always the goal.

"I think you will find most CIOs will say 100 percent up time is impossible," he said "But why would you ever target anything less than 100 percent? We have always operated well over five-nines in terms of up time. But if I were satisfied, those potential moments of down time could be the moments a patient is being impacted."

The mission of Cancer Treatment Centers of America, according to Eckes, is to offer healing and hope to complex cancer patients. It's a goal that everyone with the organization is mindful of, regardless of their job, he said.

"Everyone at CTCA draws a line everyday in how their job touches the patient."

CTCA has hospitals in Arizona, Illinois, Oklahoma and Pennsylvania. But CTCA's primary operations in Schaumburg are in tornado country, which means keeping an eye on the weather and having a business continuity plan that is resilient in the event of a damaging storm, particularly in the spring, when tornadoes are most common in this part of the U.S. The Midwest and the Central Plains of North America see more tornadoes each year than any other part of the world.

"We had a key decision to make a few years ago about whether we run centralized data centers or decentralized. Going back to that core principal of the mother standard, we made the decision by bringing it back to patients and its impact on patients."

Eckes and CTCA decided centralization was the best option so the same information was available to all employees, regardless of the facility they are working in. From a BC/DR standpoint, Eckes said a centralized data center with a backup facility was the better way to go in order to avoid any down time in the event of an emergency that takes one of the data centers offline for any period of time.

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