Gee Cheery perhaps Mr. Keating should read and consider the following before he claims >>>>Thanks to the efforts of numerous individuals, the Y2K Bug's legacy will not be chaos but rather a better understanding of IT's value to companies and improved future shareholder returns. Companies of all types — and their investors — should prosper as a result.<<<< because I think the stockholders of Oxford Health might disagree as to what that computer bug problem taught them...oh exuces me...it did teach them a lot...,but as investors they did not prosper...ROTFLMAO
(Your were up way past your bedtime. 2:34 AM?...and this Keating thing was the best you could do?...tsk...tsk...)
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cory hamasaki's
DC Y2K Weather Report
March 3, 1999 - 303 days to go. WRP113
kiyoinc.com $2.50 Cover Price.
(c) 1998, 1999 Cory Hamasaki - I grant permission to distribute and reproduce this newsletter as long as this entire document is reproduced in its entirety. You may optionally quote an individual article but you should include this header down to the tearline or provide a link to the header. I do not grant permission to a commercial publisher to reprint this in print media. The entire document is a Year 2000 information disclosure as defined in the Year 2000 Information and Readiness Disclosure Act, S 2392.
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-- What will happen --
I've been looking for a concrete example that will explain why SHMUEL, InfoMagic, Bill Hoyt, Ed Yourdon, Steve Heller, and others are worried about Y2K. At the last WDC Y2K representatives from several law firms spoke and one of them cited an excellent example.
Some background - I've written about the situation with PhyCor, Physician's Corporation, a Tennessee paperwork handling and finance company that came into this area and sold some docs a bill of goods.
To be fair, there is merit in the concept of turning office assets into cash and letting someone else handle the paperwork required by insurance, Medicare, etc.
When everything works, it works.
But in the case of PhyCor, something went horribly wrong and a cash flow crisis erupted in Maryland's medical community. Docs closed offices and laid off personnel. Not my problem, not your problem, and not a matter of life and death; unless you notice a lumpy-bumpy where there wasn't one before. Not a problem unless it's your doc who closed his office and you let the lumpy-bumpy go an extra few months or so.
Who wants to go to a strange doc and have them poke around your special body parts, the parts with both utilitarian and entertainment value? Let it go too long and you might be hearing about metastasizing cells, have to listen to your family sobbing. But that's the PhyCor story.
The lawyers spoke about Oxford Health. I checked them out, here's the deal. Oxford was a high flying medical insurance company, sharp marketing, figured out how to work the docs and companies that wanted to offer a good health plan to their employees. The Oxford stock was a rocketship.
Something went horribly wrong.
According to the lawyers and news clippings, Oxford attempted to switch database systems in mid stream. The technical details are sketchy but they had software problems for a year that involved losing transactions, not issuing bills, failing to pay the docs for services, and other accounting errors.
Some denialists like to pretend that any system can be fixed in, oh, 3 hours, maybe a half day on the outside. Oxford flubbed around for a year. In fact, there seemed long periods of time, weeks or months, during which Oxford thought its systems were working but they weren't.
Litigation, bankruptcy, people sucking lemons to make faces at each other. Oxford's stock price collapsed, jobs were lost, and somewhere in all that, there was certainly at least one person who said, ah, this lumpy-bumpy in my special body part, I'll put off getting it checked out until my insurance is working again.
Say this to yourself, read it out loud if necessary, everything else was working; the power was on; telcos, fuel, no programmer crisis but still the IT shop at Oxford was in paralysis for a year.
Please denialist butt-heads, don't argue with me. Tell the people who lost money, lost insurance coverage, lost their jobs, and maybe lost a loved one, that the Oxford insurance problem was just hype, a trick by consultants to grab for the bucks. Please give us proof that Oxford insurance did not have those problems, use your big-brain, that's what it's for, shoot, shoot the coke machine with your brain.
Until you can do that. Sit. Don't Speak.
Lets move on.
The problems at PhyCor and Oxford are not Y2K. These examples are metaphors for what will unfold over the next few years. The coverup will continue as it did at Oxford. The PR department will spin the stories. They'll pretend until it is not possible to cover up any longer.
The Oxford coverup, or was it just that management didn't know; yes they suspected, heard rumors, but they didn't believe them, how could they have known. Whatever happened, went on for a year. The time frame was 1996 and 1997.
If the Oxford model holds, then the Jo Anne Effect failures will surface toward the end of 1999. If the Oxford model holds, the IT shop failures will tank a large percentage of the large corporations.
So what does this mean to you?
It means that the large enterprises will PhyCor or Oxford you sometime toward the end of 1999 and certainly by 2000. Take precautions, prepare, have a plan-B and plan-C.
References:
"Computer Ills trigger Health Plan Losses", Computerworld, Nov 3, 1997, stock falls 62% in one day. In April, they claimed that "nearly all problems had been solved." In November, they still had problems.
"Can Oxford Heal itself", Fortune, Dec 19, 1997, recapping the IT disaster, "As the months passed, it became more and more difficult for Oxford to deny that it had serious problems."
"Falling Down", Money, Mar 1, 1998, about the stock meltdown, "Oxford admitted that continuing computer problems caused its bills to pile up."
"Spotlight on Failures(notorious IT disasters)", PC Week Aug 10, 1998, technical details on the Oxford problem, "when the system went online in September 1996, it was quickly overwhelmed by account data."
"Oxford Mends its Health by Passing the Buck", Business Week, Nov 16, 1998, about how finances are much better at Oxford because it plans to stiff the docs, "suits from 500 New York doctors seeking back pay will head for arbitration."
You denial butt-heads out there, don't argue with me. Tell the 500 NY docs, IT failures can be fixed in a few hours, this is just hype, computer systems can't kill people. Oh and if you want to argue that a rich doc can afford to take the loss, tell that to his staff, some of them got laid off, some got paid late.
This kind of screw-up affects everyone.
Coverups, high flying stock, stiffing the customers and trading partners, IT failures, market meltdown, Bozo the QA clown slamming fixes into production, frantic chimp-like arm waving. It's about to happen again and this time, it will happen to all of us.
How much warning do you need? |
