'U' Hospitals continue Y2K assessments

Many wonder and some worry about the state of affairs when the clock strikes midnight on the final eve of the millennium. Will the world run amok because computerized equipment, built to handle only two-digit years, blunders with zero-zero?

Making the transition to the year 2000 is especially critical for hospitals and other health care facilities, said Executive Vice President for Medical Affairs Gilbert Omenn.

"There has to be a maximal priority because we have life-sustaining equipment," Omenn said. "There's a lot at stake."

For more than two years, officials at the University Health System have been evaluating their equipment to make sure no computer shutdowns will occur Jan. 1, 2000.

Hospital officials classified all biomedical equipment into three risk level groups, said Theodosia Spaeth, who serves on the University Health System Year 2000 Steering Committee. In an important step this month, the institution finished assessing and correcting all biomedical equipment deemed "risk level one" - more than 3,000 items such as ventilators and defibrillators that directly affect patient lives.

"We feel we have been preparing fastidiously for the Y2K transition," Omenn said.

Only about 5 percent of the risk level one equipment was found to be potentially troublesome, Spaeth said, and these 5 percent are either already corrected or in the process of being corrected.

"It's a major milestone, but we have many more (items) to look at," said Spaeth, manager of internal communications for the health system.

There are about 10,000 items of biomedical equipment in risk level two and many more in risk level three, Spaeth said.

Equipment in these risk levels is less critical to patient care, she explained. Risk level two equipment includes x-ray and imaging equipment, while level three includes items such as televisions and scales.

Besides biomedical equipment, health system officials are also evaluating administrative, research and networking equipment.

"There's so many elements to this, and that's what makes it difficult," Spaeth said.

But even if all internal functioning at the health system continues perfectly on the first day of the new year, health system officials must also worry about difficulties coming from outside sources - suppliers of water or electricity, for example.

"What are we going to do if our vendor suppliers fail us?" asked Spaeth. "There are problems that could come to us that we can't control."

The Y2K steering committee's preparations have included contingency planning by sending more than 3,000 letters to all the health system's suppliers to make sure they were also making appropriate arrangements.

Further discussions and phone calls will follow the letters for the health system's most crucial suppliers, Spaeth said.

The Medical School is making its own preparations for year 2000, said Glenn Hiller, associate director for the Medical School Information Systems.

One major task facing the medical school is to make sure all specimens in research labs will make it through the Y2K transition.

"What our real goal in this is, is that there are no big surprises - I don't mind a few minor surprises," Hiller said.

03-24-99