Does your agency need a Y2K checkup?
Does your agency need a Y2K checkup?
Six months to go, and the clock is ticking
With the start of summer, some thoughts may be turning to pursuits more idyllic than monitoring your agency’s Y2K-compliance progress. (See Hospital Home Health, December 1998, pp. 177-181, for Y2K background information.) That would be a mistake. With only six months to go, now is not the time to allow the lazy, hazy days of summer to lull you into a false sense of security.
Assuming you’ve been in contact with your agency’s software and equipment vendors, you should already have a good idea of what needs to be replaced or updated, and more importantly, already should have started enacting any necessary changes.
For those who are just now getting around to taking an inventory of their agencies’ computer-related resources, it may be too late. To help you determine where you should be in the scheme of Y2K-compliance efforts, HHH talked to an expert in the field.
Elizabeth H. Wheeler, RRA, a management consultant with Superior Consultant Co. in Southfield, MI, says the first thing an agency should do — if it hasn’t already — is document the "process of due diligence you’ve used. . . . You want to be sure that any and all steps you have made toward Y2K compliance are in writing and are reviewable in court.
"If a biomedical device fails and a patient is injured, the first thing your attorney will do is say, Show me what you did that made you think the product was going to operate properly,’" she points out. This could be a complicated process.
"The difficulty here is that many of the large manufacturers haven’t completed their testing, and it may be as late as the fourth quarter before they can certify compliance," she acknowledges.
"Even so, if an agency knowingly puts a product into use without certification then it becomes the responsible party. No answer, in this case, is the wrong answer. You need to know the status in black and white, or you’d better retire the equipment," Wheeler adds.
A planning checklist
At this stage of the planning process, Wheeler says that several steps already must be accomplished, or at least close to completion:
All items and products, including software, that might possibly fail should have been accounted for and documented. Manufacturers of those at-risk products should have been contacted to obtain their compliance status. The health care facility that owns the products (either the home health agency or the affiliated hospital) should have prioritized those at-risk items according to their overall importance — highly mission critical, moderately important, and not important at all. (See chart for rating your risk of Y2K problems, p. 66.) A decision (preferably at the executive level) should have been made as to whether a product will be repaired, replaced, or retired. "If a product is to be retired that should happen now," she notes, adding that agencies should "either label [pieces of equipment] or put them away so they won’t inadvertently be used." If upgrades are to be made, vendors should already have been contacted and a time scheduled. "If your vendor is a small mom-and-pop operation, there may still be time. But, for the most part, it’s too late to get on the schedule," cautions Wheeler.While making certain that your agency’s biomedical equipment is working properly, don’t forget about your information management systems, she warns.
"The exchange of electronic information may be necessary to allow a piece of biomedical equipment to function or to allow a patient remote access to health care," she says. "It’s the agency’s responsibility to determine compliance and have a backup plan for forwarding data should the system fail."
An inability to exchange information has many consequences: If a telemedicine device fails to transmit blood glucose levels, a patient may not take the proper dose of insulin. If on-line claims and billing submissions are delayed, an agency’s cash flow — and ability to purchase supplies — may be impeded.
In examining information systems, Wheeler notes there are three levels at which compliance must be ascertained: "the agency’s equipment that allows the data to be transmitted; interfaces with other systems, be they internal or external, through which data travels; and thirdly, the recipient of the data."
While no one expects an agency to be responsible for making certain local phone lines are functioning, it would be the agency’s responsibility to make sure it has a contingency plan which allows business systems to continue operating.
This might mean making sure manual typewriters are on hand to type up reports or that tape recorders, rather than phone lines, are ready to be used for dictation.
Such preparations are important for keeping an agency’s business operations running smoothly, but equally as important to keeping one’s patient base, perhaps even more so.
Notes Wheeler, "Patients are so fickle that if they are removed from a particular system even for a brief while, they’ll probably get angry with the agency and turn elsewhere. And once you lose a patient, it’s very hard to get them back."
Sources
• Elizabeth H. Wheeler, RRA, Management Consultant, Superior Consultant Co., 4000 Town Center, Suite 1100, Southfield, MI 48075. Telephone: (248) 386-8300.
Rating Your Risk for Y2K Problems |
||
Rating | Severity of risk | Potential exposure |
High (3) | Patient care is disrupted
Breach of data integrity, loss of critical data, system interruption or failure Sensitive data exposed (due to failure of security mechanisms) |
Organization’s mission is substantially impeded
Invalid data analysis or interpretation, data corruption Unable to acquire products or services |
Moderate (2) | Failure of noncritical health care delivery system
Diminished systems or data integrity (can be identified and corrected with significant effort) |
Timeliness of mission-related decisions and actions is affected
Resource management is hindered Large costs to detect and correct problems
|
Minimal (1) | Personal or group productivity interrupted
Issues with systems or data integrity are apparent and easily corrected No risk to delivery of patient care or confidentiality |
Non-catastrophic system problems with limited scope are detected
No effect on mission, fiduciary or legal systems Increased stress among staff |
Source: Elizabeth Wheeler, RRA. An HIM Survival Kit for the Year 2000. |
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