The U.S. General Accounting Office is sounding the alarm on the Y2K readiness of more than 1.1 million Medicare Providers. Despite several outreach efforts by the federal government to ensure the Y2K readiness of Medicare providers, participation has been low, according to a GAO report published this month.
For instance, less than 1 percent of Medicare providers have called the Health Care Financing Administration's toll-free Year 2000 information hotline and of the 12 Y2K conferences held by HCFA, an average of 2 percent of the 10,000 providers invited to each have attended. Due to this lack of participation, the GAO is urging HCFA to:
- publicly release results of contractor and provider testing;
- solicit more suggestions from trade associations on increasing provider participation; and
- launch public service announcements.
(GAO, www.gao.gov)