Time Change Creates Work for Local Hospitals

Congress decided to start daylight-saving time three weeks earlier as a way to conserve energy. So now workers at Saint John's Hospital and Memorial Medical Center are putting in extra work to make sure the daylight savings time switch goes smoothly. St. John's spokesman Brian Reardon says, "It's been a labor intensive process. There are a few little paralells to Y2K in that there's a lot of preparation. In fact over the last month our clinical engineering department has been working on this." What they're doing is manually updating medical equipment with clocks. Stephanie Howard of Memorial Medical Center says, "Anything that has an internal clock.. so it could be monitors defibrillators, glucometers, your regular computer on your desk." Some of the equipment would normally update automatically with daylight savings time. But congress moving up the "spring forward" process by 3 weeks is creating more work. Reardon says, "What we're having to do this time around is actually update software, go back to some of the vendors, use what are called patches to make sure that that automation occurs earlier than it normally would." An official at St. John's says if they didn't go through this process, the times on their official records might not be accurate and there might be some confusion on appointment times." Both hospitals will have extra staff on hand or on call this weekend in case anything goes wrong. Reardon says, "It's more extra efforts involved. The good news for everybody is that we get an extra hour of daylight starting next monday. So that's the trade-off." Daylight savings time is officially at 2 a.m. this Sunday. So don't forget to set your clocks an hour forward!