John Kang, president of Medical Manager Corp., said his company has also been educating its customers through a direct mail campaign about millennium compliance. It has also created special teams dedicated to upgrade installations. To avoid problems, however, physicians should contact the vendor of their software and look into upgrades or other fixes. Unless you have a way to change the system date to 2000 and test the system, you can't tell if you have a problem or not. One way to test your system is to set the clock for a date in the year 2000 and see how it responds, but experts say that such a test may do more harm than good.
Many programs lock up when log-in dates appear to be out of sequence.
Problems elsewhere Physicians also need to remember that not all year 2000 problems that affect physicians will take place inside the office. K failures are found in hospitals and include ventilators and MRI equipment. If records are inaccurate or unavailable, for example, patients could receive the wrong doses of medicine or diagnoses. If patients are injured or die as a result, physicians may have to establish that they were not the cause of the harm, she said. To protect their patients from potential problems as well as to protect themselves from potential lawsuits, physicians ought to take an inventory of every way in which their practice may be affected by Y2K, Ms. Walter said.