Health Care Report: Review Y2K Document Management To Ensure Protections

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[This is the fourth of seven articles which appeared in the Premiere Issue of Prospective Risk Management In Healthcare. It is not available online. All usual disclaimers apply.]

Review Y2K Document Management To Ensure Protections

Risk Managers seeking to avoid an uphill battle in any Year 2000 (Y2K) litigation need to evaluate their organization's document management program to ensure it shows the facility has exercised reasonable care in its response to Y2K, thus creating a defensible database that demonstrates due diligence, suggested Lori Iwan, Esq., the partner in charge of the Y2K practice at Williams & Montgomery in Chicago.

A proper document management system also will allow a facility to gather the documents necessary to determine whether cost recovery is possible for any noncompliant aspect of the business, she noted.

A document management program, according to Iwan, should have these main essentials:

1. Containment of information. Make sure your entire organization has been notified that there is a steering committee or group addressing Y2K problems, that it is the only group authorized within the company to do so, and that Y2K inquiries--both internal and external--must be directed to that group. Part of that information containment process also would include purging your computer systems of any stray "we're out of time" e-mail messages from various constituents.

2. Full-spectrum documentation. Document the full effort of the response to the Y2K problem, both good news and bad news. "The place that most companies fall down is they forget to document the good news," said Iwan. For example, someone alerts them to a problem through a memo or an e-mail, and that's all they have in writing. The good-news documentation in such an instance could include brief but to-the-point minutes of committee meetings or actions taken. Follow-up documentation and documenting the beginning and end of each step is essential.

An important substep is the documentation of each critical vendor's Y2K status, as well as having tested or received "reliable" test information that the critical biomedical devices are Year-2000 compliant. That documentation would include the testing strip or printout where applicable.

3. Assessment of sales literature/contracts. Collect the sales documentation of anything in your Y2K inventory and consult with legal counsel to assess when the statute of limitations expires if there is a problem with the item or if you need to recover costs because you had to fix it. The statute of limitations varies widely among the 50 states. Under the Uniform Commercial Code, you have to raise your claim within four years of the date of delivery if you're in Illinois, for example. In that case, "if you don't notify the company from which you purchased the item within four years of the date of delivery, you've waived any right of recovery," emphasized Iwan. There is the potential that courts will be willing to keep the statute from running until potential problems are uncovered, but it is far from certain at this point, added Sean Hanifin, Esq., of Washington, D.C.-based Ross, Dixon & Masback.

-- Steve Hartsman (hartsman@ticon.net), February 19, 1999


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