Doctors must E-prescribe or else…………

Dear Dr. Geiger:

As you may be aware, Congress has mandated that the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) implement an e-Prescribing payment adjustment, or penalty, for those eligible professionals who are not “successful” e-Prescribers.  All of the payment adjustments (incentives and penalties) apply if at least 10% of your total Medicare allowed charges come from non-global office visits (this will likely apply to many surgeons).  While the payment adjustment will not take effect until 2012, the penalty is based upon the January 1 through June 30, 2011 reporting period.  To avoid the 2012 e-Prescribing penalty (1% of all Medicare reimbursement), you must report on a minimum of 10 unique visits via claims from January 1 through June 30. Each visit must be accompanied by the e-Prescribing G-code attesting that during the patient visit at least one prescription was written electronically. While only 10 prescriptions must be documented during that time period, we are continuing to work with CMS given that it will be difficult for many surgeons to comply because the prescriptions cannot be for narcotics, and prescriptions written during office visits that are associated with a surgical global period are not counted.

While we continue our advocacy efforts, however, if you are still looking for a low cost e-prescribing program, please see the National e-Prescribing Patient Safety Initiative (NEPSI) Web site for a free e-Prescribing program.  The NEPSI is a joint project of several organizations that each play a role in resolving the current crisis in preventable medication errors.  The e-Prescribing software provided by NEPSI is provided without cost by Allscripts and the members of NEPSI.

For more information, please see https://erxnowregistration.allscripts.com/.

For more information on the Medicare e-Prescribing program and whether you are an eligible professional, please see the upcoming e-Prescribing article from the June issue of the American College of Surgeons Bulletin at: //www.facs.org/ahp/pubs/whatsurg0611.pdf.

For additional information from CMS on the e-Prescribing program, please see http://www.cms.gov/erxincentive/.

Sincerely,

Carlos Pellegrini, MD, FACS, Chair, Board of Regents
L.D. Britt, MD, MPH, FACS, President, American College of Surgeons
Andrew Warshaw, MD, FACS, Chair, Health Policy and Advocacy Group
David Hoyt, MD, FACS, Executive Director, American College of Surgeons