Health Care Havoc in Y2K - health care and government services are the least ready of all industries - Brief Article

Vegetarian Times, Oct, 1999 by Allyssa Lee

It's December 31, 1999. Do you know where your health records are?

With the new millennium fast approaching, private businesses and government agencies alike are scrambling to beat the infamous Y2K (millennium-speak for the year 2000) bug. The threat, doomsayers fear, is that computers' operating systems will fail to recognize the double digit 00 as the year 2000, confusing it with the year 1900, thereby garbling all date-sensitive records.

While the scenario could be as harmless as a minor glitch in your VCR timer, it could be as catastrophic as a breakdown of the world's highly interdependent computer machinery--shutting down water and power systems and causing major blackouts. But the problems could hit even closer to home than that. The millennium bug could seriously impact your health. According to the Senate's special committee on the year 2000 technology problem, as many as 6,000 hospitals, 800,000 doctors and 50,000 nursing homes may not be equipped to handle the potential fallout. "Health care and government services are the least ready of all industries," says Ted Chandler, M.D., author of Health-Watch 2000: How to Protect Your Family's Health During the Coming Y2K Crisis (Innovative Health Concepts, 1999). "The health care industry got a very late start." It takes about three years for companies to go through assessment, remediation and testing, Chandler explains. Yet according to the fourth annual Health Care Technology Survey, compiled by the information technology law firm Gordon & Glickson, as of May 1998, more than 30 percent of hospitals had yet to begin strategizing their program updates. And that could have grave ramifications.

Practically every piece of medical monitoring equipment, from X-ray machines to fetal heart monitors to pacemakers, are dependent on microchips that make them susceptible to the glitches a new millennium may bring. Furthermore, many medical centers rely on electronic records, which, if altered, could result in fatal errors. For example, patients undergoing blood thinning therapy get their blood level checked every three weeks and their doctors rely on a machine to determine their exact prescription. If the Y2K bug were to cause an inaccuracy in the device, the faulty data might indicate the wrong prescription.

To ensure that your family's health needs aren't compromised at the turn of the century, Chandler recommends getting any tests (e.g., blood tests, disease screening) done before January 1, and not to schedule elective surgery for the first six months of 2000. (Of course, provisions are being made for emergency care.) Another tip: Obtain print-outs of all your family's health records or make your own. Review all written and electronic records for accuracy and thoroughness and make copies. "Doctors in offices didn't avidly accept computerization, so most of their records are intact," says Chandler. "If the doctor's office has a written summary of test history, prognosis, treatment, prescriptions, that's all you need." There's also the possibility that a pharmacy may not be able to fill your medication on time, so Chandler recommends stockpiling a two-month supply of prescription drugs.