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📍   Today in Health IT, we're discussing Verizon's outage affecting millions. This episode is brought to you by Omnissa, the first AI driven platform enabling seamless, secure, personalized work experiences. Discover more at thisweekhealth. com backslash Omnissa. My name's Kate Gamble.

I'm Managing Editor at This Week Health, where we host a set of channels and events dedicated to transforming healthcare, one connection at a time. I've spent the last 12 years interviewing CIOs, and I'm excited to bring that knowledge into this community of leaders. Discussing the recent Verizon outage that affected millions.

And I'm joined by Sarah Richardson, President of This Week Health 229 Executive Development Community. Sarah, welcome to the show. Thank you and happy Friday, Kate. Yes, happy Friday to you. this is an interesting story we're going to talk about. Verizon Recently restored service after a major outage affected over 100, 000 users across the U.

S., primarily in cities like Chicago and Seattle. The outage began at 9. 30 a. m. Eastern Time and lasted almost 10 hours. And while it affected mostly the Midwest, the outages stretched as far east as New York and as far west as Colorado. Now, Verizon did respond to this by deploying more than 20 mobile satellites to provide temporary connections, but as of now have not stated what caused the outage or if it's related to damage caused by Hurricane Helene.

So this type of thing, this isn't just an inconvenience. This is a nightmare scenario. Where you have tens of thousands of people whose phones are in SOS mode and they can't seek emergency assistance. And of course you have the disruptions in care coordination. So as a former CIO, I'm guessing that you have probably had some experience with this type of situation.

Yes, I've actually had multiple scenarios where there was some kind of, I'm just going to say telecom outage, something related to the outage of the way that you do your basic communications. It is massively disruptive. It hurts your communication. Systems internally, if you've got a private network connection that is running some of your communication systems, especially for nursing, we've seen a trend over the years where you may have a private DAS, essentially distributed antenna system, but rather than managing it yourself, you're working with a third party who has secured your 5G network, as an example, so that your Wi Fi traffic is separate from your nursing communication traffic.

So it's one thing to have a privately hosted instance on a public. Provider, if they go down, then you have to have a backup plan for that. We have a massive reliance on technology for patient care and coordination now. And planning for any of this is not dissimilar to your disaster preparedness protocols.

Whether it's happening because there was a hurricane or it's happening because there was an outage from your carrier. What is your backup plan? And that robust plan has to be something that is dependable during network failures. And more importantly, that relationship with your telecom provider for prioritizing service restoration.

We heard in this case, the satellites went up. There are so many components, though, of critical infrastructure review, risk management, and your vendor agreements that come into play during this type of event.

Yeah, there is, a lot there.

That speaks to, as we said, vendor management and making sure that they have a solid business continuity plan in place. And I guess the tricky thing here is that you're often. Relying on more than one vendor. So this is a whole part of the strategy, just making sure that they have contingency plans and that they are, have the redundant systems.

this seems like this really has to be an ongoing thing and it has to involve a lot of different people.

It does. I think most importantly about the investment in diversified communication channels for emergencies. This is not going to be uncommon for anybody who lives in a space where you have to literally think about crisis management and crisis management often can be natural disasters.

I live in California. We have earthquake and fire and also flood protocols we need to follow. I lived in the Midwest where we had to plan for tornadoes. I've lived in hurricane spaces where we had to plan for hurricanes. What was interesting is you start thinking about. All right, what are all my backup systems?

Can I use Wi Fi calling? Can I use the hospital's Wi Fi network for communication, perhaps like FaceTime, WhatsApp, or other enabled calling services? What's my landline phone scenario look like? And ensuring they're still functioning landlines and critical areas, we call them red phones, usually is important.

I think about though, who am I going to call from, I guess I could call from a landline to a cell phone, but unless my phone is fully charged, I don't even know most people's phone numbers anymore. And So landline node for external, be able to call out to those areas. Radios are still a huge win inside these hospitals.

When your staff has the walkie talkies for internal communication, usually it's your facilities teams that do. they always have the backup batteries and the banks, again, down in those departments, and they can be very helpful. Pager systems, they're not. Completely gone. Some facilities still maintain their own pager systems.

I recall, when we did a major upgrade to a DAS in a facility where I used to work, we literally could not get rid of the voice pagers. And it was something that they said, we're just going to use them until they don't work anymore. I'll tell you. Some of those are still in operation. I actually talked to people that still work at that hospital.

yeah, we still got voice pages floating around. Like they never die, which is that could be a win in many cases, but more than importantly, it's emergency alert systems. When you have the ability to connect with people during outages and ways to make sure that it could be a satellite phone, it could be a lot of different things that are available to you, but those backup capabilities and be able to plan for a worst case scenario, so if you're, if you know how to cover your facility A hurricane, you're also going to know how to cover your facility during a cell outage, as an example, because the scenario is happening.

It's not really the catalyst is, Could be so many different factors. And these are the things that we all go back and put our, old school infrastructure hats on, because as soon as you think that landlines and pagers aren't a part of your universe anymore, they inevitably pop up as a solution that could still be your best option in an emergency.

Yeah. And to take this in a different direction, This reminds me of a discussion that came up during our recent 229 Project Summit, where some of the leaders were talking about whether or not physicians can document on paper and even know how to do that. But this is something else that can come up.

And it's, Like pagers might seem counterintuitive to where the industry is going, but these are necessary skills. And, I guess that has to be part of the training. It

does have to be part of the training. Cause here's the other thing. When's the last time you had a landline in your house? I haven't had a landline in my house for over 20 years.

Didn't get affected by yesterday's outage. If I had, I'd have been without communication for the entire day. There is literally no way to call anybody from our home. If your provider is down.

The last part of this that's also important is, making sure that your teams are compliant with FCC regulations, making sure that the updates that are necessary are happening.

But, I would think something like this shines a light on those needs as well, talking about compliance requirements. and. Yeah, just wanting to make sure that your teams are aligning with all the most current best practices in IT infrastructure.

It is. It's also a reason why I tend to be a fan of hosted solutions in these spaces because it's a pretty significant investment.

To have your infrastructure, especially like a DAS, updated in your organization. And when you have somebody else who's doing that with you, they become the person you can call, they can help you manage a scenario, but they're keeping regulations up to date, compliance up to date, upgrades up to date, all of the things that are easier to get overlooked, because we're talking about things that don't fail very often, yet when they do, because we haven't necessarily planned for that component.

It gets that much more attention. And so when you have a really great third party that you work with, it helps you manage that environment. They also see it all over the country and so many different places, and they can bring to you both best practices and thoughtful ways to think about how do we recover as quickly as possible.

Yeah, that makes a lot of sense because a lot of times there aren't even the resources to have somebody who's tasked with this, because as you said, it's not going to happen all the time, but when it does, you need to be able to manage it. So that is a case where it really makes sense to have some kind of third party that you can count on.

The person on your team that's having to manage the phone bill for your landlines usually doesn't see that as a win in their monthly routine, but it certainly is because it ends up being part of your critical infrastructure. for the tasks that people have on your teams that may not seem like they're as much fun, yet they are, necessary or a continuity of operations.

Remember to go and thank them once in a while for keeping the lights on literally and paying attention to details that are easy to overlook.

Yes, that's great. Love how you put that. now it's Friday and, where I live, in a beach town with a lot of Tourists who are now gone. So we call this local summer.

So I will hopefully be on the beach enjoying some time there without the many, people who come here during the summer. So hopefully you have something fun planned as well.

I do. It's been exceptionally hot this last week or so, and I'm looking forward to it starting to cool down a little bit so that fall literally feels like fall sooner than later.

We are having a late summer, and as much as I love the sunshine, I'm okay with sunshine and about 10 degrees less heat. Enjoy the beach! Thank

you. Don't forget to share this podcast with a friend or colleague. Use it as a foundation for your daily or weekly discussions on the topics that are relevant to you.

📍 They can subscribe wherever you listen to podcasts. That's a wrap. Thank you so much, Sarah, as always, and have a great weekend. You too, Kate. Thanks.