Understand which problems depend on another supplier

What this means for your practice

Identify third-party responsibilities and escalation routes explicitly. Make coordination commitments clear without promising control over another supplier's response.

How to review the arrangement

Rehearse a dependency outage when its provider is outside coverage hours. What useful investigation, fallback or update remains possible? Ask who coordinates the case. The proposal should describe those commitments without implying control over another company's response or repair times.

Keep coordination separate from direct control

Ask the maintainer to list the connected services it cannot administer and the contacts required to investigate them. Confirm whether the practice must authorise a request or provide an account reference. Keep those arrangements available before an outage, particularly where the external provider has different support hours.

Use a fictional booking-service failure to discuss what happens while the other company is unavailable. The maintainer may still be able to confirm the symptom, gather useful information and keep the practice updated. Any temporary alternative should be approved for the actual service. Clarify who owns the overall conversation so staff are not sent between suppliers without a next step. The agreement should explain useful coordination without implying that one company controls another's response. During a review, look at delays caused by missing contacts or unclear responsibility; those are practical gaps the parties can often address even when they cannot change a provider's operating hours.

How to check the result

Track incidents delayed by missing dependency ownership or contact information.