Serious question about deleting client files during a server crash

I was working late at a medical billing office in Phoenix last Tuesday when our main server just started beeping and went dark. All 3,000 patient records for that month were sitting in an open folder that hadn't been backed up since 2pm. My boss was already gone for the day and I panicked hard. I literally unplugged everything and called our IT guy at home at 9pm crying. He walked me through pulling the hard drive and using a recovery tool that saved about 85% of the files. The other 15% we had to reconstruct from paper copies the next morning. Has anyone else had a near miss like this where you almost lost critical data?

2 comments

2 Comments

the_charlie1d agoMost Upvoted

I read somewhere that medical offices are actually the worst about this stuff because of all the HIPAA nonsense making backups complicated. That's rough though, 15% from paper copies must have been a nightmare. A buddy of mine who works in IT at a dental chain told me they had a similar scare last year and now they run three separate backups during the day just to be safe. Honestly I think your IT guy saved your bacon by walking you through that recovery tool, most of them would just say "should have backed up" and hang up.

terry11d ago

Dude, that sounds absolutely terrifying, and I'm really sorry you had to go through that. I can't imagine the sinking feeling when that server went dark with all those records just sitting there. Good on your IT guy for actually helping you pull that recovery off, a lot of them would have just told you to wait until morning. That 15% you had to piece back together from paper must have taken forever, but at least you had those copies to fall back on. I'm glad you got most of it back, seriously.