Healthcare Financial News

Eight out of 10 Americans fear that the current financial crisis will affect their ability to pay their medical bills, according to the results of a poll of more than 4,000 U.S. adults released today by the Deloitte Center for Health Solutions, a non-partisan research group. The poll also examined consumers’ attitudes about health care, an issue weighing heavily on voters’ minds as they head to the polls this election season.

Only six percent of Americans surveyed believe their family is completely prepared to handle future healthcare costs.  Additionally, seven out of 10 believe the financial crisis will make it harder for those who are uninsured to receive medical treatment. 

“Health care is a pocketbook issue for most Americans,” according to Paul Keckley, Ph.D., executive director of the Deloitte Center for Health Solutions.  “As they make their final decisions on which candidate to vote for, our research suggests that the financial crisis has only compounded the significance of other issues, such as the affordability of health care.  Consumers already struggling to pay their mortgages or put food on the table are now also asking themselves how their vote will affect their ability to afford health care for their families.”
 

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.