Millennium Bug’ can make you sick if your computers can’t read double zero
Sound futuristic? The Year 2000 Problem’ can’t wait to be solved
Meteors. Professional futurists. Cordless-phone-induced neck injuries. Flesh-eating bacteria. The X-Files. If developments like these don’t convince you the End Is Near, then consider the "Year 2000 Problem."
Variously called the "Millennium Bug" or "Y2K," this computer processing time bomb threatens disaster for millions who depend on information technology which, by the way, is just about everybody.
The problem arises from the nearly universal practice over the past 30 or more years of using two digits rather than four to designate the calendar year, e.g., DD/MM/YY. Computer programs were written for a two-digit notation to save costly storage space and data-entry time. Of course, computers aren’t alone in using date shorthand. When is the last time you referred to your high school graduating class as "the class of 1973," rather than "the class of 73"?
Thus, with the inexorable approach of Jan. 1, 2000, in approximately 33 months (barring meteor interference), computers everywhere will begin screwing up dates as fast as you can say "double zero" unless applications are fixed or replaced. Any computer calculation that involves a date billing, Medicare reimbursements, clinical documentation could yield incorrect answers.
Robin Will, director of information management for Shands HomeCare, a hospital-based agency in Gainesville, FL, states categorically, "The fix cannot NOT happen. If it’s not fixed it would cost us. It would affect our billing, clinical links documentation, bring us to a work stoppage, and put us back to a manual system."
Will explains that her hospital’s MIS system is 24 years old, and that "some hospitals’ information systems are 40 years old."
A worst-case scenario, she says, would be the year 2000 problem forcing agencies "back to hard-copy billing for Medicare. It can cost you a lot of money by decreased cash flow."
Unless a program is year 2000-compliant, meaning most programs written after 1995, the computer will assume the year 2000 is 00. Thus, subtracting 45 from 00 would yield -45, not 55, because there is no two-digit designation for the 21st century. As far as the computer is concerned, the century could be anything between 1100 and 1900. If your agency had a home care patient who was 99 years old in 1999, a computer would calculate the patient’s age as 2 years old in 2002.
The Millennium Bug appears in older mainframes running COBOL programs, as well as networks, minicomputers, and PCs. Hospi tals and their resident home care agencies certainly would be affected, along with insurance companies, financial institutions, communications firms, and, of course, the federal government. Anyone who uses an ordinary spread sheet on a desktop computer could be vulnerable.
Addressing the problem will take planning, but it must begin now, experts agree. If your agency is using "off the shelf" software, check the documentation to see if it’s year-2000-compliant. If not, or if you can’t determine that, contact the manufacturer. Microsoft, for example, is working on a solution now for its products. If your software is custom-designed, then contact your vendor and ask what he or she intends to do about it. If your own information systems department built the system, they should already be developing a plan.
Delta Health Systems, the computer software company that designed Shands HomeCare’s system, has organized a task force of senior managers to come up with a solution, a company spokesperson says. Delta has begun notifying customers of the steps it intends to take, but the Alatoona, PA-based company hasn’t solved the problem yet.
Other health care software vendors, such as Simione Central in Atlanta, GA, and Beyond Now Technologies in Overland Park, KS, acknowledge through spokespersons that they are aware of the Y2K problem, but neither company offered to share its plans for a solution.
Rick Stazesky, director of systems analysis and development for the Visiting Nurse Service of New York, says "most new programs, made within the last two years, anyway, will handle it [Y2K]. If a system was designed five, 10, 15 years ago, it probably won’t recognize 2000.’
"What should you do? Go back to the company who made the software. If you built the system, you deal with it."
The federal government is dealing with it now. Government agencies have Y2K web pages. The U.S. Navy has even designated a Year 2000 action officer.
In a recent report, the White House’s Office of Management and Budget (OMB) predicts computer programs will fail in one of three ways: They will reject legitimate entries; they will compute erroneous results; or they simply will not run.1 The OMB said systems that compare dates and those that calculate length of time are especially vulnerable. The latter are the most common programs run in federal computer systems for example, how benefits are computed (based on length of time); how eligibility is determined (based on length of service); and how expiration dates are calculated (expires after three years).
Take a tip from the feds (no, really)
It’s not going to be a cheap fix. A worldwide cost estimate, provided to Congress last year by the Gartner Group, puts the figure at between $300 and $400 billion to remedy the problem. No one has yet estimated the cost of not fixing the problem.
Federal agencies estimate they will spend $2.3 billion between fiscal year 1996 and fiscal year 2000. Estimates cover the costs of identifying necessary changes, evaluating the cost-effectiveness of making those changes, making the changes, testing systems, and contingencies for failure and recovery. Estimates do not include upgrades or replacements, nor the federal share of costs for state information systems that support federal programs.
The Health Care Financing Administration (HCFA) assures callers "everything’s under control," then refers people to the OMB, which, as it turns out, isn’t such a bad idea. They have a plan. So in case your vendor has been hard to reach lately, you might consider what federal agencies are doing about it.
The OMB has devised a plan of action for federal agencies, which are in turn required to report their progress quarterly. The solution is comprised of five phases that could be universally adaptable:
• awareness;
• assessment (subdivided into scope and schedule);
• renovation;
• validation;
• implementation.
Deadlines have been assigned for each phase. The deadlines differ for each agency. For example, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), to which HCFA belongs, is required to complete the Awareness phase by 11/96; Assessment: Scope, 1/97; Assessment: Schedule, 6/97; Renovation, 12/98; Validation, 1/99; and Implementation, 11/99. The total cost for HHS will run to $90.7 billion, OMB estimates.
Your solution may be simply a matter of contacting your vendor, or it may require considerable planning and implementation efforts, either by your vendor or your information systems staff to rewrite computer programs.
But it’s not going to fix itself. When Jan. 1, 2000, gets here, do not ask for whom the Millennium bell tolls; it tolls for thee.
Reference
1. U.S. Office of Management and Budget. Getting Federal Computers Ready for 2000. Washington, DC; Feb. 6, 1997.
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