Ready for year 2000 computer woes? Nonprofit has health care solutions
Ready for year 2000 computer woes? Nonprofit has health care solutions
Jan. 1, 1999, could pose problems as well
Fast forward: You’re back at work on the first day of a new century, rested from a day off and raring to go. With the holidays over, there’s lots of work piled up. So you turn on your computer, key in a patient identification number to check a patient record and the record’s gone. Purged. Deleted.
The computer system, programmed to recognize two-digit dates that have been used routinely for decades to save space, was unable to recognize 00 as a valid date and purged the patient information. Meanwhile, in the patient accounts department, the same date recognition problem is interpreting 00 as the year 1900 and wreaking havoc on the automated billing system.
This could be a common occurrence on Jan. 1, 2000, especially among smaller, budget-hungry hospitals, industry experts say, if more isn’t done to tackle computer system date-recognition problems now. Welcome to the dreaded year 2000 problem.
Access managers, by this point, should be fully engaged in discussions of year 2000 compliant software, says Jack Duffy, FHFMA, corporate director of patient financial services at ScrippsHealth in San Diego. "The message bears repeating as we learn more and more that everything with a clock in it is subject to the year 2000 problem. Have all the pieces of software you use been certified? Do you know [whether] they are compatible with changes in dates?"
The years 1998 and 1999 will rack up the largest number of computer conversions in the history of health care, Duffy predicts. Some vendors are saying they will patch the software to correct the problem, some will write new software, and others are abandoning it completely, particularly older versions, he adds. If your vendor has decided not to update, he cautions, time is running out to get on a new vendor’s installation list.
"A very large percentage of [smaller hospitals] are just now starting to think about the year 2000 situation," says Ron Bernier, president and chief operating officer of Compucare, a Reston, VA, health information systems company. "Most of them have systems that are not year 2000 compliant. You can’t admit patients; you can’t discharge patients; you can’t cut bills unless the dates are accurate."
But it doesn’t have to happen that way. Your computer systems don’t have to fall victim to the so-called millennium bug, or more properly (since technically the new millennium doesn’t start until Jan. 1, 2001), the year 2000 problem. There is help out there geared specifically to the health care industry in the form of Rx2000 Solutions Institute, a nonprofit organization created to help the health care industry prepare for and avert year 2000 computer problems.
Based in Minneapolis, Rx2000 targets its efforts at the entire health care community, including hospitals and hospital systems, managed care organizations, integrated delivery systems, clinics, long-term care facilities, pharmaceutical manufacturers and companies, and medical device manufacturers.
Founded early last year by Joel Ackerman, who serves as executive director, and a group of colleagues in the health care industry, the institute’s goal is to educate members of the industry about what the potential year 2000 problems are and how they can solve them.
For access departments, an eligibility inquiry at the time of admission could be particularly thorny, he points out. That’s because it "depends not only on your system, but on those you’re trying to communicate with and networks in between," he says. "The strong emerging theme is that what people thought was an internal issue they now understand is an internal and an external one. "You’re more at the mercy of external people you don’t have any control over, particularly if you’re not a major health care provider."
Most hospitals aren’t prepared yet
The good news for access departments, he says, is that hospitals preparing for the year 2000 are focusing on billing systems and admitting, discharge, and transfer. The bad news is that "as far as we can tell, hospitals in general are not moving at all on this issue."
There is a lack of awareness and a misplaced trust in software vendors, Ackerman notes. Hospital administrators "think, I’ve purchased a system, the vendor will take care of me.’ I wouldn’t count on it."
The list of potential computer disasters continues to grow as the problem is examined more closely. "On a daily basis, we’re learning more about the problems and what the issues are. At the same time, the clock is ticking. The time to solve it is dwindling," he says.
In fact, problems could occur even sooner than 2000. "We’re expecting a mini-year 2000 problem on Jan. 1, 1999," says Ackerman, a former computer programmer. That’s because in programming, the number 99 is often used to indicate something special. "If we didn’t know a date but had to put one in, we’d use all nines to indicate forever. In some cases, it would indicate the end of the file." An electronic patient record could "stop processing when it hits the record with nines in the date, so it might drop a lot of records."
A second goal of the institute is to serve as an information clearinghouse. As anyone knows who has browsed on the Internet for year 2000 information, there is a dizzying array of Web sites but few devoted to health care.
Hospital information systems could face serious glitches, Bernier says. "Because there are so many older legacy systems, hospitals are going to have to really question vendors as to what they will have to do to bring them into compliance.
"There have been so many acquisitions of [computer] companies that companies end up with multiple product lines. There are quite a large number of products that are sunsetted. And [hospitals] face a total purchase and installation of a new system."
Rx2000 offers these services to help prepare computer systems for the third millennium:
o Supplier reporting service
"The key initial thing is supplier information," Ackerman says. Health care organizations need to know if suppliers of basic services have taken into account the potential problems associated with a century change and have solved or are working on correcting those problems.
"What we found was that organizations that tried to go out to suppliers and ask them what the [year 2000 compliance] status is, they’re getting little or no response back. When they did get a response, it’s typically something glib like, We’re working on it; don’t worry about it.’"
Vendor surveys show year 200 readiness
The institute is working with health care organizations that submit a list of suppliers and products that have sparked their concern. The institute contacts suppliers on the list, acting as a representative of a broad coalition of those suppliers’ customers.
Rx2000 is creating standardized surveys that suppliers are asked to complete, indicating whether they are aware of the year 2000 problem and whether they have educated their staff and allocated appropriate resources to addressing the problem, Ackerman explains. The idea behind the coalition, he says, is this: "If you want to be a supplier to the industry, you need to answer these questions."
The institute plans to charge an annual participation fee for the service.
o Vendor matching service
Rx2000 will match health care organizations that have specific product or service needs with vendors who say they can fill those needs. Like the supplier service, the vendor matching service will ask vendors to complete profiles describing their business and any preparations they are making for year 2000 problems. The service is free to health care organizations, but vendors will be charged to participate, Ackerman says. (See "Year 2000 Compliance Agreement" insert for sample warranty language to ensure that vendors are year 2000 compliant.)
o World Wide Web site
The institute’s Web site offers information about potential year 2000 problems, including self-help documents contributed by health care organizations and presentations to alert administrators of the potential seriousness of the problem.
o Listserv
The Web site explains how to subscribe to the Rx2000 Solutions Institute listserv, a daily dialogue among health care industry professionals.
Those hospitals that haven’t begun to tackle the problem yet had better hurry, Ackerman says. Programmers are being snapped up at a fast clip, and some consultants aren’t taking on any new year 2000 clients.
When it comes to information systems, "If you make a decision in July 1999 to buy something, there is no way you’ll have it up and running in time," Bernier warns.
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