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| Effective January 1, 2009, the Center for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) will provide monetary incentives to Physicians for adopting electronic prescribing. Under the Medicare Improvements for Patients and Providers Act of 2008 (MIPPA), CMS will give a bonus of up to 2% of the allowed amount of Medicare reimbursement payments to practitioners who use qualified e-prescribing systems from 2009 through 2013, and a reduction in payments of up to 2% to providers who fail to e-prescribe by 2012. |
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How will I be eligible to get incentives?
The physicians who serve Medicare patients can claim an additional 2% bonus: ‘Medicare allowed charges for all covered professional services codes to which the e-prescribing measure applies are less than 10% of the total of the allowed charges under Medicare Part B for all such covered professional services furnished by the eligible professional’.
What will be the criteria for compliance?
Eligible Physicians / provider must report a minimum of 25 eRxs associated with a patient visit for the year 2010. Each visit must be accompanied by the eRx G-code attesting that during the patient visit at least one prescription was electronically prescribed. Additionally, 10% of an eligible professional’s Medicare Part B charges must be comprised of the codes in the denominator of the measure to be incentive eligible. Electronically generated prescriptions not associated with a denominator eligible patient visit do not count towards the minimum of 25 different eRx events. |
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What should I do and what are the costs and options for
e-prescribing systems?
A physician has to acquire electronic prescription writing software from healthcare technology vendors. There are two types of electronic prescription systems: one, a stand-alone e-prescription system and two, integrated Electronic Health Records (EHR) with e-prescription capabilities. The cost of acquiring a standalone e-prescribing software system ranges from free * to $100 per month. The benefits of standalone e-prescription systems are that they are inexpensive, can be installed on your existing computer hardware, utilize your current internet connection, and have a learning curve of less than a week for practitioners’ and staff. The EHR software systems offer integrated functionality but may become cumbersome and expensive for some doctors. Higher capital investment, longer learning curve and training issues, technical support and other expensive services are important factors for deciding on an EHR. Studies estimate costs for office-based EHRs are about $25,000 to $45,000 per physician. Estimates of annual costs for operating and maintaining an EHR range between about twelve and twenty percent of initial costs, or about $3,000 to $9,000 per physician per year . |
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