Yes. For healthcare clients, planning IT work around patient hours is the default, not a special request.
Many IT companies keep IT-company hours. Their convenient time for a visit is 10 a.m. Tuesday or 2 p.m. Thursday, which is exactly when your operatories are running, the chairs are full and one interruption can throw off the whole afternoon. That doesn't fit how a medical or dental practice runs, so we don't work that way.
Most IT work at a practice can be planned: patches, upgrades, training, projects, onboarding and configuration changes. That work gets scheduled around your patient calendar.
Here's how we fit work into a practice's day:
You tell us when the practice is busy, when it's slow and when it's closed. We build the IT calendar around the patient calendar.
For ongoing clients, it's a working relationship rather than a formal process. Your practice manager, or whoever is your main IT contact, coordinates with our team on what needs to happen and when. Scheduled work is usually arranged through:
Use whichever method works for your office. Scheduled work happens at the agreed time, not "sometime Tuesday."
Not everything can wait for a slot. There's a real difference between planned work and something that just broke.
Scheduled: patches, upgrades, training, new user onboarding, new device deployment, software installs, network changes, server maintenance, business reviews, security awareness training, phishing simulations, audits, documentation reviews and vendor coordination calls.
Handled right away: anything actively affecting patient care or stopping work. That's what our industry-leading SLA is for. If your practice management or EHR software goes down mid-morning with a full waiting room, don't wait until lunch. Call us. Your plan's coverage hours and response commitments are set out in your service agreement.
Planned work on your schedule plus prompt response when something breaks is what most practices need, and we provide both.
Much IT work has to happen on systems that are also serving patients. Server reboots, software updates, network firmware and security patches all have to happen sometime, ideally not at 11 a.m. We use maintenance windows outside your operating hours for:
Most staff never see this work. They just notice that things keep working and that nobody has asked them to restart anything during patient hours in a long time.
When a scheduled change will affect how staff use a system (a new login process, a new email setup, a workflow change), we announce it in advance. An email goes out a few days ahead explaining what's changing, when and what staff need to do, if anything. For bigger changes, we walk the practice manager or a designated staff member through it first. Nobody should arrive on Monday to find that something looks different without warning.
Practice 360, NerdSquad's managed IT program for medical and dental practices, includes regular check-ins with practice leadership, usually quarterly. They're scheduled well in advance, kept short and focused on three things: what's working, what isn't and what's coming next. It's where IT planning happens, instead of only problem-solving.
We can schedule almost everything. We can't schedule a ransomware attack, a failed hard drive or a hurricane. For those, we rely on our incident response process and your backup and disaster recovery setup. The daily rhythm of patches, upgrades, training and projects is still planned around your practice.
We support practices across Naples, Fort Myers, Cape Coral, Bonita Springs and the rest of Southwest Florida. If you've been putting off IT work because the disruption didn't seem worth it, let's talk. There's almost always a way to schedule it without costing you patient hours.
Already a client? Call (239) 465-0079 or submit a ticket. If something is down, call so we can start right away.
Not a client yet? NerdSquad Managed IT Services is a Managed Service Provider (MSP) based in Naples, Florida. We support businesses onsite across Southwest Florida and remotely nationwide. Book a discovery call or call (239) 465-0079.