The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) has announced a new initiative for physicians who adopt and use qualified electronic prescribing systems to transmit prescriptions to pharmacies. Physicians who use e-prescribing may earn an incentive payment of 2 percent of their total Medicare allowed charges during 2009.
The e-prescribing incentive is in addition to a 2 percent incentive payment for 2009 for physicians who successfully report measures under the Physician Quality Reporting Initiative (PQRI), and both incentive payments are in addition to the 1.1 percent fee schedule update required by the Medicare Improvements for Patients and Providers Act of 2008. Thus, a physician who successfully reports under both the e-prescribing and PQRI initiatives could receive up to a 5.1 percent pay boost for 2009.
According to CMS, widespread adoption of electronic prescribing can eliminate medication errors that result from the misreading of handwritten prescriptions. Medicare beneficiaries may also have reduced out-of-pocket costs as e-prescribing facilitates communication between prescribers and pharmacies on lower-cost generic alternatives.
Read the CMS fact sheet.
