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Year 2000 Computing Crisis: Status of Medicare Providers Unknown

AIMD-99-243 Published: Jul 28, 1999. Publicly Released: Aug 06, 1999.
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Highlights

Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO reviewed the: (1) 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.

Recommendations

Recommendations for Executive Action

Agency Affected Recommendation Status
Health Care Financing Administration In order to reduce the risk of year 2000-related failures of the Medicare provider community and ensure that the public has adequate information about what is being done to reduce the risk of such failures, HCFA should: (1) continue to solicit suggestions from healthcare provider trade associations on how to increase participation in outreach activities; (2) consider using additional outreach methods, such as public service announcements; (3) consider conducting end-to-end tests with providers and Medicare contractors on a sample basis, if time permits; (4) set milestones for Medicare contractors to test with providers; and (5) continue to publicize the results of all contractor/provider testing on HCFA's web site.
Closed – Implemented
HCFA established a provider outreach team and conducted outreach activities. It conducted testing with contractors and set a goal for contractor testing with providers/submitters. A substantial percentage of providers/submitters, representing about half of HCFA's overall claims volume, were tested. HCFA also posted some results of contractor/provider testing on its website.
Healthcare Sector Working Group The healthcare sector working group of the President's Council on Year 2000 Conversion should: (1) develop a template to ensure that future surveys include critical questions on testing and contingency planning and to ensure that assessments are categorized into areas such as billing/medical record systems, biomedical devices, and infrastructure; and (2) consider working with associations to publicize those providers who respond to future surveys in order to increase survey response rates.
Closed – Implemented
The Healthcare Sector Working Group did continue to encourage associations to survey and conduct other outreach with the medical provider community. However it did not develop a template.

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Topics

Claims processingMedicareSoftware verification and validationHealth care programsInformation resources managementMedical information systemsStrategic information systems planningSurveysSystems compatibilitySystems conversionsY2K