Caredove is a cloud-based service and, like any online service, may occasionally experience a temporary interruption. Caredove targets 99.9% availability each calendar month for paid Premium Services, subject to the exclusions described in our Service Level Agreement.
What happens during an outage?
If Caredove is temporarily unavailable, you may not be able to:
Sign in to Caredove
Send or receive referrals
Book new appointments
View appointments or referrals other information already in Caredove
Use other Caredove features until service is restored
Your organization's exact impact will depend on how you use Caredove.
What should I do?
If you are having trouble accessing Caredove, first check whether the issue is affecting other users in your organization. If the issue appears to be affecting Caredove more broadly, contact Caredove Support.
Prepare for short service interruptions
Your organization can reduce the impact of a short Caredove interruption by configuring email notifications for booked appointments.
When these notifications are enabled, staff can retain some visibility into upcoming appointments through their email, even if Caredove is temporarily unavailable. This may help staff know which intake appointments are scheduled for later that day or the following day.
Email notifications are not a replacement for access to Caredove. Staff may still need to access the appointment in Caredove to view the full information required to complete the callback or other intake activity.
During an outage, the main impacts are:
New appointments cannot be booked.
Staff may be unable to access the details of upcoming intake appointments to provide scheduled callbacks.
Once Caredove is restored, staff can return to their normal appointment queue and resume booking and callback activity.
What does Caredove do during an outage?
Our team works to determine what is affected, restore normal service, and confirm that Caredove is operating properly again.
For significant service disruptions, Caredove maintains a formal Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery plan. The plan covers events including significant platform failures, loss of cloud infrastructure and cyber incidents. Caredove's Recovery Time Objective (RTO) for the Caredove Platform is 4 hours. This is a disaster-recovery planning objective; it does not mean that a typical interruption will last four hours.
How will I know when service is restored?
Caredove will communicate information about significant service interruptions through appropriate customer communication channels. Once service has been restored, you can return to Caredove and continue your normal workflow.
Depending on how your organization uses Caredove, you may want to review:
New referrals or requests
Upcoming appointments or callbacks
Any work that accumulated while Caredove was unavailable
Does Caredove test its disaster recovery procedures?
Yes.
Caredove's Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery program is fully tested at least annually, including disaster recovery and backup restoration testing. These tests are documented and the plan is revised as necessary.
In addition to the annual full test, Caredove conducts tabletop exercises to rehearse how the team would respond to different outage and disaster scenarios.
We also test application restoration procedures frequently, including restoring application data from backups, so that recovery procedures are exercised regularly rather than only during the annual BC/DR test.
Does my organization need a separate backup system?
Not necessarily.
Your organization should decide what level of business continuity is appropriate based on the services you provide and the impact of a temporary interruption. For many workflows, the appropriate response may simply be to pause activity until Caredove becomes available again.
If your organization does create an interim process, remember that personal health information and other sensitive information must remain appropriately protected during a contingency or outage. Caredove applies the same security and privacy expectations during emergency operations as during normal operations.