Congress to Doctors: Start e-Prescribing or Take a Medicare Pay Cut

Both bill outlines would give docs who e-prescribe a 2% bonus in 2009 and 2010. Those who don’t use e-prescribing would see their payments cut by 1% in 2011, and by 2% in 2013 and beyond. Some docs would be exempted by the bills.

Both measures are tied to broader bills that would block a 10% Medicare pay cut that’s set to take effect on July 1.

clipped from blogs.wsj.com It’s sounding more and more likely that a coming Medicare funding bill will push doctors to switch to electronic prescribing. We reported earlier this week that Max Baucus, the Democrat who chairs the Senate finance committee, had floated this outline by doctors groups, proposing to give doctors a Medicare reimbursement bonus if they switch to e-prescribing in the next few years. In 2011, the carrot switches to a stick, with docs who haven’t yet switched getting a cut in their Medicare reimbursement rates. Now a powerful Republican, Sen. Chuck Grassley, has floated a similar proposal, the WSJ reports. Medication errors are a huge problem in medicine, and e-prescribing is a common-sense improvement. E-prescribing systems can flag likely errors and alert pharmacists to potentially risky interactions when a patient is taking multiple drugs. But, as with electronic health records, there hasn’t been much of an economic incentive for doctors to switch to the new technology.