When the EHR feed is down
What to do when the EDFlow EHR feed is delayed or down: what patients see, frozen estimates, the downtime procedure and kit, running the manual console, and handing back to the feed.
When the EHR feed stops, EDFlow tells patients their updates may be delayed and keeps working from the console. The integration team is alerted automatically.
Feed states
| State | When | Patients see | Staff see |
|---|---|---|---|
| Healthy | An event or heartbeat within 5 min | "Live" | "EHR live" |
| Delayed | Nothing for 5 min | "Updates may be delayed. Last updated … Your care continues as usual." | "EHR feed delayed · n min" chip and banner |
| Down | Nothing for 15 min, all sources disabled, or the site suspended | The feed-down banner; estimates frozen | "EHR feed down" banner with links to the manual console and the downtime kit |
| Manual mode | The site has no feed | Nothing extra | "Manual mode" chip |
Frozen estimates
While the feed is down, estimates keep their last text and add "Times may not be up to date while updates are delayed." They never switch to "taking longer than usual".
Downtime procedure
Confirm
Check the banner and ask integration on-call only if the banner has been up for longer than your site's downtime threshold. They are already alerted.
Open the downtime kit
Downtime in the header: the current board as a paper tracking sheet (bed, initials, stage, pending tests), a blank request log, your site's downtime procedure and the recovery checklist. It prints and works offline.
Keep patients current
Use the manual console for the milestones that matter to patients: triage, seen, tests under way, results back, reassessed, disposition, departure. Patients see these immediately. Requests keep working.
Register new arrivals if needed
Register by hand only during downtime. Those visits are marked for linking when the feed returns.
Handing back
When the feed recovers, the engine replays what it held. Events more than 30 minutes old apply silently (no patient notifications). Then:
- Link any downtime registrations (Needs linking on the board).
- Check overrides you set during downtime and clear the ones the EHR now gets right.
- Follow the recovery checklist in the kit.
Related
- Manual console
- Feed health for integration analysts
- Engine configuration, how engines survive an outage
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