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Comment: |
Joel Ackerman uses the analogy of the leaky pipe. What happens if they all leak together?
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Perhaps you are one of the people who believe the year 2000 issues are overblown and just consultant or vendor hype. Let’s assume for a moment that you are right. You expect you’ll experience a number of small, correctable, "nuisance" problems. Your plan -- to simply revert to manual processes and take corrective actions. Minor delays and inconveniences will result. If a pipe springs a leak you turn off the water for a while and fix it. No big deal.
But what would happen if, at the same time, leaks started springing out in many departments of your organization, as well as in nearly every other organization in the health care industry around the world? Taken individually, the problems might not be significant. If they occur at roughly the same time, say January 1, 2000, for example, the effects are not only cumulative but multiplicative. Someone recently said that the year 2000 issues might not be like a ten thousand pound boulder falling on your head. It might only be like five hundred one pound stones falling on you. The net effect is still the same, and it’s probably going to hurt a lot more in the process.
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