According to Health and Human Services Secretary Mike Leavitt, illegible physician handwriting on prescriptions results in drug errors and causes adverse reactions for 1.5 million Americans every year. It also puts additional burden on pharmacists who have to make 150 million phone calls annually to doctors to decipher their prescription.
The new move for electronic prescriptions will begin in 2009 and continue for four years. It is expected to help streamline the prescription process and cut down on errors. In 2009 and 2010, Medicare will give doctors a 2 percent bonus on top of their fee for using electronic prescription. In 2011 and 2012, the bonus will drop to 1 percent, and in 2013, the bonus will drop again to 0.5 percent.
Those who don't use e-prescribing will be subject to fee reductions of 1 percent in 2012, 1.5 percent in 2013 and 2 percent thereafter. The move is expected to save taxpayers as much as $156 million over the next five years, officials said.
Currently, about 10 percent of family physicians use computers to transmit prescriptions to pharmacies. Medicare recently paid the first bonuses to more than 56,000 doctors that totalled more than $36 million. Payments ranged from $600 for individual doctors to $4,700 for group practices.
