Year 2000 Computing Crisis: Action Needed to Ensure Continued Delivery of Veterans Benefits and Health Care Services Page: 3 of 28
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Mr. Chairman and Members of the Subcommittee:
We appreciate the opportunity to participate in today's hearing on the
readiness of the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) to deliver benefits and
health care services through the turn of the century. We will focus on the
Year 2000 (Y2K) readiness of automated systems that support such
delivery, the compliance status of biomedical equipment used in patient
care, and the Y2K readiness of the pharmaceutical and medical-surgical
manufacturers upon which VA relies. In discussing biomedical equipment
and pharmaceutical products, we will also share with you information on
the Food and Drug Administration's (FDA) Y2K efforts.1
In brief, VA continues to make progress in its Y2K readiness. However, key
actions remain to be performed. For example, the Veterans Benefits
Administration (VBA) and Veterans Health Administration (VHA) have not
yet completed testing of their mission-critical systems to ensure that these
systems can reliably accept future dates--such as January 1, 2000. Also,
VHA has not completed assessments for its facility systems, which can be
essential to ensuring continuing health care. In addition, neither VA nor
FDA have implemented our prior recommendation to review the test
results for biomedical equipment used in critical care/life support
environments. Further, VHA's pharmaceutical operations are at risk
because the automated systems supporting its consolidated mail outpatient
pharmacies are not Y2K compliant. Finally, VHA does not know if its
medical facilities will have a sufficient supply of pharmaceutical and
medical-surgical supplies on hand because it does not have complete
information on the Y2K readiness of these manufacturers. It is critical that
these concerns be addressed if VA is to continue reliably delivering benefits
and health care.
Key Actions Remain to Like many organizations, VA faces the possibility of computer system
failures at the turn of the century due to incorrect information processing
Ensure That VA Can relating to dates. The reason for this is that in many systems, the year 2000
Deliver Benefits and is indistinguishable from 1900, since the year is represented only by "00."
Health Care Into the This could make veterans who are eligible for benefits and medical care
Next Century appear ineligible. If this happens, the issuance of benefits and the
Next Century
1Biomedical equipment refers to both medical devices regulated by FDA and scientific and research
instruments, which are not subject to FDA regulation.GAO/T-AIMD-99-136
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United States. General Accounting Office. Year 2000 Computing Crisis: Action Needed to Ensure Continued Delivery of Veterans Benefits and Health Care Services, text, April 15, 1999; Washington D.C.. (https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc289706/m1/3/: accessed March 29, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, UNT Digital Library, https://digital.library.unt.edu; crediting UNT Libraries Government Documents Department.