If the anesthesia practice obtains patient demographic data electronically from the hospital, it should make sure that dates are formatted correctly. Also, if the practice uses electronic claims clearinghouses, it should ascertain their compliance status and be prepared to fall back on manual solutions. Existing data should be backed up, and then a dry run performed. This should not be left until the last minute. Some experts contend that the testing could take up to half the time of the remediation program itself.
Additional errors tend to reveal themselves in the testing process.
The process described above for ensuring that anesthesia practices' reimbursement operations are Y2K compliant may sound daunting. In reality, though, it may require nothing more than a review of what the billing company or computer vendor has done. Anesthesia practices that outsource their billing and simply transmit patient records to a company such as Medaphis or Medac will need to rely on that company's statements regarding its state of preparedness. The companies are identified by name in order to provide information that should be more directly helpful than anonymous examples. Reference to a specific company in no way constitutes an endorsement, and omission of numerous other companies does not imply any sort of value judgment.