A year and a half ago I wrote in to one of these forums. I think that it was the original Gary North sponsored forum for physcians and I am not sure where they are now. At that time I talked about being ready to do my part to keep medicine afloat. Allow me to elaborate further to say that I am a pathologist at a small (150 bed) hospital in the south. At that time I assured everyone that we had our Y2K problem firmly in hand. We had generators, we had surplus reagents, and our remediation program was nearly complete.

A follow up is in order. Today our lab computer is "mostly" compliant. (See how we went from nearly complete to mostly compliant in only 18 months?) We run a Novell server and testing seems to be going fine. There are still problems but they seem to mostly be cosmetic. Our FDA approved Blood Bank program is down as the latest software upgrade to the server caused very "funky behavior". A quote from our systems guy. The vendor knows about this problem, and has for over a year, and has promised a fix in the first quarter of 98....er second quarter....er fourth quarter...errrr soon. We could not wait for their fix so are operating in manual (paper ) mode until systems guy sets up seperate server with old Novel software just for them. Needless to say these two systems will no longer talk to each other. ( Oh $%#^&! You mean I have to type all that information in?)

Several instruments in the lab are still not compliant and vendor promised fixes have yet to materialize. We may be able to lie to these machines about the date or we may not be able to! It seems that they read the reagent and control expiration dates from the bar codes on the bottle and that may send them into never never land. I only had one conversation with an engineer of one machine before the lawyers got a hold of management. He said "No it will not roll over and yes it will stop working. We are working on it and expect a fix in one month". That was 11 months ago and no word from them. We can do some things without these machines but not everything. The equiptment to duplicate these tests manually like we did 20 years ago isnt even made anymore. Nor would I have the manpower to do them manually if I could get the reagents and equiptment. One tech now oversees thousands of test per year thanks to automation. Id have to triple my staffing and where would I get them?

The hospital information system (HIS) is now compliant and functioning well. They have also had to replace the internal phone system due to Y2K problems with the ATT Spirit system. Nine Hundred Thousand dollars later the phones now work just like they did before. Like that upgrade will increase our productivity! Necessary but money down the drain! The heating and cooling system has bugs but the maintenence guys say that its more often crashed than running so they are used to running it manually. The generators only have 5 days of fuel. There is a couple of days of water stored. Management thinks were ready!!!!

The other hospital in town hired a consultant 5 months ago to asses their Y2K status, and thats when they started working on their systems. The business community seems to think that they are ahead of us because they hired a consultant. Actually it may not have hurt them to start late as almost all fixes are from vendors and the vendor either will or wont get it done. (Based on the slippage Ive seen Im not to confident.) Neither one of us has in house software to fix. They also have about 5 days of fuel and think theyre ready.

Well that just one more data point from the front. I will not try and interpret or extrapolate from this to say how bad its going to be, you decide. Its a small town of 30,000 but Ive moved 8 miles further out off a dirt road on 24 acres. No flames about spelling or grammer please. The details about the Server system are vague because I dont really understand all the ins and outs and my systems guy talks another language. If someone wants verification I will provide it to Ed or Cory or Paul and they can vounch for my bonifides.

LM

-- LM (latemarch@usa.net), January 21, 1999

Answers

Yep, LM, your hospital sounds much further along than any we've encountered. Can't imagine hospitals functioning well post Y2K. *Everything's* gone electronic. Staffing bare-bones, ppl moving/working fast, workload heavy, pressure intense, even with all the tools working. These days a person is really ill to be in the hospital for more than two days. Rushed, scary, lives on the line.

LM, kudos for being aware, concerned, and giving us this update! Testimony from the field is especially valuable. Thanks.

xxxxxxx xxxxxxx xxxxxxx xxxxxxx x

-- Leska (allaha@earthlink.net), January 21, 1999.

LM: congratulations on a job well done! Wish we a lot more of your type out there - y2k wouldn't be such a biggie What is the status of the embeds in various patient care devices such as infusers, defibrillators, pumps, etc.?

-- a (a@a.a), January 21, 1999.

If I don't die from starvation, and if I don't by the sword, it looks like I'll surely die in the hospital. Woe is me.

-- bardou (bardou@baloney.com), January 21, 1999.

You're not in the midwest are you? :<

-- Moore Dinty moore (not@thistime.com), January 21, 1999.

To a-- Yes we have a team looking at the embedded chips in the various monitors and IV pumps etc. Only small problems none serious, bad logging or refusal to start at a certain time if programmed for delayed start. Functions that the nurses never used. They just grab it and start it. Never the less they will be taken out of service.

To Dinty Yes south but midwest.

LM

-- LM (latemarch@usa.net), January 21, 1999.

Good report, and an excellent way to see the difference between "ready" and "compliant".

The hospital is not compliant.

On the other hand, it's identified the things that aren't compliant and has identified which things will break and which things can be worked around. It's ready for the worst (that nothing else gets fixed!) and will hopefully be using the next eleven months wisely.

This is one reason why xx% compliance figures are a poor indicator of reality. (The other is that claimed compliance may be a lie)

-- Nigel Arnot (nra@maxwell.ph.kcl.ac.uk), January 22, 1999.