Summary: The Health Care Financing Administration (HCFA) has taken comprehensive outreach measures to ensure that Medicare providers will be Year 2000 compliant. For example, earlier this year the HCFA Administrator sent letters to more than 1.1 million Medicare providers urging them to take prompt action on their information and billing systems. Also, HCFA has held a series of Year 2000 conferences throughout the country and has established a toll-free information hotline. Despite these aggressive measures, providers' participation in HCFA's outreach efforts has been low. Furthermore, HCFA has required contractors that process Medicare claims to test with providers using future dated claims. As of June 1999, Medicare contractors' testing with providers had been limited and testing that has occurred had identified problems. Many surveys have been completed this year on the Year 2000 readiness of health care providers by healthcare trade associations and other groups. However, none of the 11 surveys GAO reviewed provided enough information with which to assess the Year 2000 status of the healthcare provider community.
