Medicare Compliance & Reimbursement

If electronic prescribing seems far too difficult a path for most practices to travel, new proposals in the works at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services could help clear some key roadblocks.

In his Oct. 19 keynote address at America's Health Insurance Plans' annual Medicare conference, CMS Administrator Mark McClellan stressed tight timelines for reform bill goals for Medicare managed care health plans. Although the Medicare Modernization Act doesn't require implementation of e-prescribing standards until 2008, federal agencies are working now on proposed standards and will announce them "soon," said McClellan, who added that he wants Medicare e-prescribing "in place by 2006."

To help make this a reality, CMS will shortly propose a Stark-law exception for helping physicians go electronic. Also soon to emerge from CMS, said McClellan, is a proposed rule setting forth an exception to the statutory prohibition against hospitals offering physicians benefits such as free computer equipment to facilitate the move to e-prescribing. Such monetary transfers are generally banned, on the argument that they create conflicts of interest that may compromise doctors' clinical judgment. 

But crafting such an exception for e-prescribing "makes sense because the benefits don't go mainly to the physician but to the patient and to the health-care system," said McClellan.

Lesson learned: Stepped up efforts from CMS could help make e-prescribing a more viable option for providers.