' Hospitals Stare Down Millennium
by Spencer E. Ante
3:00 p.m. 6.Oct.98.PDT
Minutes into the new millennium,
life-support equipment begins to power
down in Chicago trauma wards, and
emergency rooms go dark in Los Angeles.
A group of Year 2000 experts came
together Tuesday in Washington to figure
out how to prevent such a grim scenario
from unfolding.
"Hospital systems are extraordinarily
complex and interconnected," said Wilkey
Green, the minority staff director of the
Senate's special Year 2000 committee
and one of the meeting's speakers. "Our
concern is that these systems be made
compliant."
Hospitals are potential Y2K minefields.
They rely on hundreds of biomedical
devices, including pacemakers, cardiac
defibrillators, and magnetic image
resonance systems. And any equipment
that requires date or time calculations
can rely on embedded computer chips
susceptible to the millennium bug.
Other systems at risk include patient
record and billing systems -- including
Medicare and Medicaid -- admission and
discharge software systems, and physical
building controls, such as automatic doors
and climate control.
"Perhaps more than any other institution,
it is essential that hospitals are prepared
to meet the challenges posed by the Year
2000 computer problem," said John
Koskinen, President Clinton's point man on
the millennium bug. "Y2K failures in the
most basic systems could have serious
repercussions for patient care."
Committee co-chairman Senator
Christopher Dodd was particularly critical
of the medical-equipment manufacturers
that have not informed hospitals of their
progress towards making their devices
Y2K compliant.
A 29 July report by the Veterans Health
Administration reported that of the
nation's 1,409 medical-equipment
manufacturers, 47 percent said their
products were not susceptible to the
millenium bug. But the health
administration still hasn't received
information from almost a quarter of
those companies. And a recent Food and
Drug Administration survey mailed to
16,000 manufacturers received only a 12
percent response rate.
"That is unacceptable," said Dodd
(D-Connecticut). "Hospitals need to have
that information if they are to be
successful in preparing for the Year
2000."
On the other hand, an informal survey by
the American Hospital Association
suggests that the health-care industry
may be making more progress than it's
given credit.
The study found that 89 percent of 800
hospitals that responded have inventoried
existing equipment, and 76 percent have
surveyed vendors to determine whether
equipment is Y2K compliant.
The president's council launched the
Health Care Working Group to turn up the
Y2K heat in the industry. Chairman Kevin
Thurm, deputy secretary of the
Department of Health and Human
Services, said the group has
representatives from major federal health
care agencies.
Even if the larger hospitals are prepared
to handle Y2K, some experts expressed
concern about the ability of rural
hospitals to root out the millenium bug.
"Senator Dodd visited an urban,
well-funded hospital recently and found
that dialysis machines that they had
bought several years ago at US$15,000 a
pop had to be replaced," said staff
member Green.
"What does this mean for rural,
underfunded hospitals?"
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