6 tips for avoiding Y2K problems
(Editor's note: In this month's issue of Same-Day Surgery, we bring you the second part of a two-part series on concerns about year 2000 compliance in the same-day surgery area. Last month, we covered four critical areas to ensure you're prepared, and we offered you a list of year 2000 seminars being offered by the Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations.
In this month's issue, we give you six suggestions from year 2000 experts. We also give you a list of World Wide Web sites and tell you about a new Internet-based tool that allows you to submit your inventory and have it compared with a repository of manufacturers' compliance information.)
To address potential problems with your equipment and information systems during the date change to the year 2000 (Y2K), consider the following suggestions from Marion M. Powell, RN, former senior analyst and Y2K project manager at Atlanta's Egleston-Scottish Rite Health Care System. Powell spoke earlier this year at the Health care Information and Manage ment Systems Society annual conference.
1. Assign a project manager. The manager doesn't have to work in information systems, although that is helpful. If your facility has sufficient staff to allow it, have a person assigned to the Y2K project only, and have that person report directly to top management, not through a chain of command that could allow critical issues to slip through the cracks. Before a direct reporting line to management was implemented at Egleston-Scottish Rite, "Initially, it was very difficult to get questions answered," Powell said.
If you have a small staff, consider using a consultant, experts advise.
2. Develop a Y2K project team. At Egleston-Scottish Rite, four full-time employees work on the project: two systems analysts, a biomedical engineer, and the project manager. In addition, a part-time executive assistant handles database input. The expertise of the biomedical engineer has been used to identify and test medical devices for compliance.
3. Set up a Y2K task force. At Egleston-Scottish Rite, this diverse group includes representatives from every aspect of the health care system. At first, it met monthly, but it now meets twice a month and may come together more often as 2000 approaches. The group consists of representatives from the following areas:
· senior administration;
· purchasing;
· finance;
· clinical;
· facilities;
· physicians;
· information services;
· network (clinics);
· affiliates (HMOs);
· legal.
Egleston's hospital attorney records the minutes at task force meetings. This ensures that everything said at the meetings is protected by attorney-client privilege.
4. Network to obtain information. While at Egleston-Scottish Rite, Powell was a member of the Atlanta Year 2000 Users Group, the Georgia Hospital Association, and the Atlanta Hospital Group. Typical meetings of many of these groups include presentations or updates by vendors and suppliers, which offer a constant stream of new information. World Wide Web sites also can be helpful, she suggests. (See list, above left.)
5. Involve the board of directors early on in the project, Powell advised. The key reason for this is liability. "When it comes to legal liability, it's going to be the board that gets sued, not the project managers. They [board members] need to be involved."
6. Break the Y2K compliance project into several broad categories, such as personal computers (PCs) and software applications. "You can't just test one model," Powell said. Two identical PC models can have different versions of the same chip inside. One may be Y2K compliant, while another may not.
The Egleston-Scottish Rite's task force has sent letters to software vendors asking for the following information:
· date data format descriptions;
· date data in the applications data files;
· date data within user exits;
· date data on screens;
· date data on reports;
· archive, purge programs, or records based on date data;
· current releases in use at the health care system;
· required upgrades, if applicable;
· costs for upgrades;
· rollout dates for upgrades;
· interfaces affected by date change.
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