VA Issues Guide for Medical Facilities' Year 2000 Preparations

Washington, D.C. -- The Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) has published a patient-focused contingency planning guide to help VA and other health-care facilities prepare for the Year 2000 date change.

One large health care-related organization said VA's Patient-Focused Year 2000 Contingency Planning Guidebook provides "information that will greatly help our members as they continue to refine their contingency plans for Year 2000."

"In fact, we've already posted it to our website for our membership to hyperlink to VA's comprehensive work," said Nancy Darr, vice president of planning and program development at Premier, Inc., which has more than 1,700 member hospitals.

The guidebook provides an easy to follow, nine-step approach to constructing a Year 2000 contingency plan, complete with sample contingency plans for each department in a typical health care facility as well as an overall plan for an entire facility. Suggestions to limit adverse impacts and risks also are provided with each sample.

The guidebook contains an extensive outline to assess, renovate, validate and prepare contingency plans for medical devices; a comprehensive assessment of potential external threats, such as utility, trash, and transportation systems failures or outages; and provides guidelines for Year 2000 emergency preparedness training and drills. The guidebook also has recommendations for exercising and testing critical utility systems such as emergency power and water.

As a public service, VA has made the guidebook available free of charge on the department's Internet Home Page at www.va.gov/year2000.