Health and Human Services Secretary Mike Leavitt said Monday his department will do all it can to promote the use of electronic prescribing as a way to launch widespread use of healthcare IT.
Advancing electronic prescribing is and has been "a top goal" of this administration, Leavitt said. The adoption of e-prescribing is expected to reduce deadly prescription errors and time-consuming administrative costs.
According to the Institute of Medicine, more than 1.5 million Americans are injured each year by drug errors. Other studies show that pharmacists make more than 150 million phone calls a year to clarify illegible prescriptions with doctors.
As part of recently passed Medicare legislation, HHS will reward Medicare providers with a 2 percent incentive payment in 2009 and 2010, a 1 percent incentive payment in 2011 and 2012 and a one-half percent incentive payment in 2013 for using electronic prescribing.
Beginning in 2012, providers who are not using e-prescribing will receive a reduced payment, Leavitt said. However, on a case-by-case basis, HHS may release some providers from penalties if they can prove undue hardship for adoption.
Medicare is expected to save up to $156 million over five years by preventing some 530,000 adverse drug events, Leavitt said.
Kerry Weems, acting administrator of the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, said the agency will hold a conference this fall to help physicians prepare for e-prescribing by 2009. It will also issue guidance in the coming months on specifics required to receive the 2 percent bonus.
CMS has a program already underway to reward healthcare IT adoption. Through the Medicare Physicians Quality Reporting Initiative (PQRI), CMS has paid out $36 million in bonuses to more than 56,000 health professionals who reported quality information to Medicare, Weems said. The average incentive amount for individual physicians was more than $600 and the average incentive payment for physician group practices was more than $4,700, he said. The largest payment to a physician group practice totaled more than $200,000.
According to Weems, providers can expect to spend an estimated $3,000 to jumpstart e-prescribing, including the cost of training, with an addition monthly fee for a data exchange line.
James King, MD, a family physician in Tennessee and president of the American Academy of Family Physicians, said the incentives should help physicians make the change to e-prescribing. He said he has tried to use it, but several barriers remain. For example, one can't cross state lines with an e-prescription, and prescriptions for certain controlled substances still have to be made by hand, per orders of the Drug Enforcement Administration.
King said only 9 percent of the academy's membership report using electronic prescribing, with 37 percent reporting they have electronic health records. An additional 13 percent expect to adopt electronic health records before the end of the year.
"Hopefully these numbers will increase before the penalty phase starts," he added.
Do you plan to adopt e-prescribing before 2009? If no, why not? Please share your thoughts with Senior Editor Diana Manos at diana.manos@medtechpublishing.com.