Medicare Offering Bonuses to Doctors Who Use E-Prescriptions
Doctors are being offered an incentive by Medicare to start ditching old paper prescriptions in favor of electronic ones. The expectation is that e-prescriptions will reduce costs and minimize mistakes due to doctors' notoriously terrible hand writing. Starting January 1st of 2009, doctors will start receiving bonuses for using e-prescriptions, which are accepted by 80-percent of pharmacies in the country, including the largest chains, such as CVS, Rite Aid, and Walgreens. In 2009 and 2010, doctors will receive a 2-percent bonus on Medicare payments, 1-percent in 2011 and 2012, and half a percent in 2013. In addition to the incentives, Medicare plans to push doctors towards the electronic methods by instituting penalties on those still using paper prescriptions starting in 2012. Starting at 1-percent, the penalty will rise half a percent per year till it reaches 2-percent in 2014.
Overhead of switching to an electronic system is reasonably low thanks to The National ePrescribing Patient Safety Initiative, a coalition that offers Allscripts, an e-prescription software package for free to doctors.
It may not seem like much, but switching to e-prescriptions is a first step towards an overhaul of the health care industry championed by President-elect Obama, who has stressed the importance of modernizing the system with electronic records. [From: Reuters]
