Minutes into the new millennium, life-support equipment begins to power down in Chicago trauma wards, and emergency rooms go dark in Los Angeles.
A group of Year 2000 experts came together Tuesday in Washington to figure out how to prevent such a grim scenario from unfolding.
"Hospital systems are extraordinarily complex and interconnected," said Wilkey Green, the minority staff director of the Senate's special Year 2000 committee and one of the meeting's speakers. "Our concern is that these systems be made compliant."
Hospitals are potential Y2K minefields. They rely on hundreds of biomedical devices, including pacemakers, cardiac defibrillators, and magnetic image resonance systems. And any equipment that requires date or time calculations can rely on embedded computer chips susceptible to the millennium bug.
Other systems at risk include patient record and billing systems -- including Medicare and Medicaid -- admission and discharge software systems, and physical building controls, such as automatic doors and climate control.
"Perhaps more than any other institution, it is essential that hospitals are prepared to meet the challenges posed by the Year 2000 computer problem," said John Koskinen, President Clinton's point man on the millennium bug. "Y2K failures in the most basic systems could have serious repercussions for patient care."
Committee co-chairman Senator Christopher Dodd was particularly critical of the medical-equipment manufacturers that have not informed hospitals of their progress towards making their devices Y2K compliant.
A 29 July report by the Veterans Health Administration reported that of the nation's 1,409 medical-equipment manufacturers, 47 percent said their products were not susceptible to the millenium bug. But the health administration still hasn't received information from almost a quarter of those companies. And a recent Food and Drug Administration survey mailed to 16,000 manufacturers received only a 12 percent response rate.
"That is unacceptable," said Dodd (D-Connecticut). "Hospitals need to have that information if they are to be successful in preparing for the Year 2000."
On the other hand, an informal survey by the American Hospital Association suggests that the health-care industry may be making more progress than it's given credit.
The study found that 89 percent of 800 hospitals that responded have inventoried existing equipment, and 76 percent have surveyed vendors to determine whether equipment is Y2K compliant.
The president's council launched the Health Care Working Group to turn up the Y2K heat in the industry. Chairman Kevin Thurm, deputy secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services, said the group has representatives from major federal health care agencies.
Even if the larger hospitals are prepared to handle Y2K, some experts expressed concern about the ability of rural hospitals to root out the millenium bug.
"Senator Dodd visited an urban, well-funded hospital recently and found that dialysis machines that they had bought several years ago at US$15,000 a pop had to be replaced," said staff member Green.
"What does this mean for rural, underfunded hospitals?"
