Georgia legislator’s bill would allow Y2K drug stockpiling
A Healthcare InfoTech Staff Report
With fewer than 300 days before year 2000, there already have been sporadic reports of potential drug hoarding by consumers, and a Georgia legislator wants to make sure that activity is legal. The House of Repre sen tatives has passed a bill introduced by George Grindley, a Republican from Georgia’s Cobb County, that would allow those requiring "life-sustaining" prescription drugs to begin in December to stockpile enough of those medi cines to last them through to the end of March 2000. Besides allowing the hoarding, the bill has the purpose of encouraging drug companies to step up production so there will be enough pharmaceuticals to stockpile.
But Grindley’s bill may have a major downside. According to some, if the bill goes into law, it will foster Y2K paranoia and encourage hoarding as a self-fulfilling prophecy. Fearing that, Sen. Connie Stokes, the Democratic chairman of the Health and Human Service Committee, is refusing to put the bill on the committee’s schedule. She says that Georgia’s Year 2000 Readiness Act, which requires any "essential services" to be Y2K compliant, already addresses the issue of hoarding. Additionally, she says that if some states encourage stockpiling, others will be faced with shortages. The bill appears to be headed for the dustbin, since it will die if not acted upon by the end of the 1999 legislative session this month.
Meanwhile, the U.S. government this week raised its estimate for the cost to fix the Y2K problems of federal agencies from $6.4 billion to $6.8 billion and said the costs are likely to go even higher. That figure was cited in a report issued over the Internet by the Office of Management and Budget. The report also said that of the 224 largest government agencies, three of them the Agency for International Development, the transportation Department, and Health and Human Services have failed in making adequate progress on the issue.
Y2K to bring babies as well as bugs
While most health professionals are concerned about the Y2K bug, obstetricians may really have their hands full of a potential baby boomlet during the hours and days before and after the clock ticks over to the year 2000. The new millennium (yes, it doesn’t start ’til 2001, but that’s just a detail) has spawned a "millennium baby" craze and a whole variety of "first baby" contests and promotions. That hype will increase over the next two weeks, since April 9 is considered the critical day for conceiving a baby likely to be appear on the scene next Jan. 1.
Everything2000.com (www.everything2000.com) is jumping on this particular bandwagon, billing itself as the "premier source for millennial and Year 2000 information." Among other things, the site is following several potential "milleni-moms" and "will chronicle the expectant women to hopeful births on January 1, 2000." Some of the site features include information on Year 2000 celebrations around the world, computer issues, and links which take you to other sites giving advice to couples on improving the opportunities for millennium births.
Matt Markovich, managing editor of Everything2000.com, said the site’s offerings "are more than just hype we have doctors debating the ethics of surgical delivery just after midnight and politicians denouncing baby contests in New Zealand."
Horizon offers Y2K guide
Horizon Information Group (Boston, www.HIGweb.com) has joined with the Massachusetts Hospital Association (MHA) to provide that state’s hospitals with additional Year 2000 guidance and tools as part of an ongoing Year 2000 Resource program. "The Smaller Business Year 2000 Guide: A Complete Year 2000 Compliance Program for Small and Mid-Sized Businesses" and the IST Year 2000 Analysis Suite are being offered to MHA members at a business partner discount. Hospital Information Group (HIG) is contacting other state hospital associations to set up alliances in order to offer the products to their members, according to Robert DeMaria, company president.
Andy Freed, director, information technology and member relations at MHA, said members of MHA "are well ahead of the national curve in terms of Year 2000 preparedness. The guide and IST’s software are additional proactive tools that Massachusetts hospitals can use to ensure that the highest level of patient care continues into the next millennium."
The guide is designed to help small- and mid-sized healthcare providers successfully address Y2K-related legal, financial and technological issues, based on their individual business requirements. It includes guidelines for documenting Year 2000 testing efforts and tracking vendor Y2K readiness. And it offers guidelines to create the due diligence documentation critical to any successful Year 2000 compliance effort.
The IST Year 2000 Analysis Suite can be used to analyze Year 2000 risks in common desktop spreadsheets, databases and programming language files from a single analysis workstation. It analyzes files across the network, identifying those with and without Year 2000 risks and pinpointing specific cells, fields and lines of code that may require correction.
Adventist HealthCare adopts Phoenix testing
Phoenix Health Systems (Montgomery Village, MD) has signed an agreement to extend its Year 2000 testing and project oversight services to Adventist HealthCare, a 600-plus bed integrated healthcare delivery system including Shady Grove Adventist Hospital in Rockville and Washington Adventist Hospital in Takoma Park. Phoenix provides information systems consulting and outsourcing services to healthcare providers.
Phoenix will carry out an eight-month project to oversee, document and facilitate the Y2K compliance of information systems at Adventist, with its efforts focused on the organization’s 500 software systems, including enterprise-wide clinical, financial, administrative, and ancillary systems, desktop and departmental applications; as well as the hardware and operating environments of 60 servers and 1,200 desktop workstations. Phoenix will manage complete systems inventories, testing and validation of compliance, tracking compliance status, remediation management, and project management of systems upgrades and replacements.
Phoenix offers systems planning, procurement, implementation and management services, including transition management, consulting, and project management.
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