What are the warning signs your practice's IT support is failing?

The warning signs are boring and cumulative: the same fault recurring, tickets closed without explanation, invoices that surprise you, updates applied mid-clinic, and nobody who can say when your backups were last test-restored. Any one of these is a bad week. A pattern of them is your provider telling you what the relationship has become.

In a medical practice the signs have sharper edges. A provider who still cannot name your clinical software after a year of invoices. Reception keeping a folder of workarounds because reporting faults stopped feeling worth it. Panic before accreditation because the information security evidence the RACGP Standards expect does not exist and nobody knows whose job it was. Updates to Best Practice or MedicalDirector landing during Monday clinic instead of out of hours. Each of these says the provider serves offices, and your practice is being supported like one.

Do not switch in anger; switch on evidence. Ask two questions in writing: when were our backups last test-restored, and where do we stand against the Essential Eight, control by control? Both have factual answers a competent provider can produce within days. They are small questions to ask and hard ones to dodge, which is what makes them useful: the answers clarify your position whichever way they land.

The fair caveat is that some failing relationships are really failing contracts: a practice that has grown, sitting on a plan sized years ago, will feel neglected whoever the provider is, and the fix is a reset conversation rather than a switch. If the answers to the two questions never arrive, though, our Essential Eight Cyber Security Scorecard is free and gives you the same evidence in writing, or call 1800 456 567.