Year 2000 Computing Crisis: Status of Medicare Providers Unknown Page: 3 of 42
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GGAO
Accountability * Integrity * Reliability
United States General Accounting Office Accounting and Information
Washington, D.C. 20548 Management Division
B-283199
July 28, 1999
The Honorable Tom Bliley
Chairman
The Honorable John D. Dingell
Ranking Minority Member
The Honorable Michael Bilirakis
Chairman, Subcommittee o n Health and Environment
The Honorable Sherrod Brown
Ranking Minority Member, Subcommittee on Health and Environment
The Honorable Fred Upton
Chairman, Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations
The Honorable Ron Klink
Ranking Minority Member, Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations
Committee on Commerce
House of Representatives
Virtually everything in today's hospital is automated-from the scheduling
of procedures such as surgery, to the use of portable devices as diverse as
heart defibrillators and thermometers, to the billing process. It therefore
becomes increasingly important for healthcare providers such as doctors
and hospitals to assess their billing/medical records information systems
and biomedical equipment to ensure that critical systems are Year 2000
compliant.1 At your request, our objectives were to assess (1) the
Department of Health and Human Services' (HHS) Health Care Financing
Administration's (HCFA) outreach and testing efforts for ensuring that
Medicare providers will be Year 2000 compliant and (2) surveys that have
been completed to date or planned on the Year 2000 status of healthcare
providers. On June 29, 1999, we briefed Committee staff on the results of
our work. The briefing slides are included in appendix I.
This report provides a high-level summary of the information presented at
that briefing, including background information, Year 2000 risks
confronting healthc are providers, HCFA o utreach and testing efforts, and
The Year 2000 problem is rooted in how dates are recorded and computed. For the past several
decades, computer systems typically used two digits to represent the year, such as "99" for 1999, in
order to conserve electronic data storage and reduce operating costs. In this format, however, 2000 is
indistinguishable from 1900 because both are represented as "00." As a result, if not modified, systems
or applications that use dates or perform date- or time-sensitive calculations may generate incorrect
results beyond 1999.GAO/AIMD-99-243 Year 2000 Status of Medicare Providers Unknown
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United States. General Accounting Office. Year 2000 Computing Crisis: Status of Medicare Providers Unknown, report, July 28, 1999; Washington D.C.. (https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc295171/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.