AMA Leads The Efforts to align e-Prescribing and EHR Implementation

ttached a link http://www.ama-assn.org/amednews/2010/12/20/gvsa1220.htm to a very interesting article published in the recent AMA News edition entitled, "Revise unfair e-prescribing policy, doctors say."
The American Medical Association and more than 100 other state and specialty medical societies are urging the Dept. of Health and Human Services to revise a Medicare e-prescribing policy that slaps doctors with a financial penalty in 2012 if they don't meet specified e-prescribing criteria during the first six months of 2011.Physician practices need to meet certain e-prescribing criteria during at least 10 office visits between Jan. 1 and June 30, 2011, according to the final rule. Physicians who don't must pay the government a penalty equal to 1% of all of their Part B earnings in 2012.
AMA leaders believe the penalty is unjustified, and they want CMS to change it.
"The last-minute decision to require e-prescribing in 2011 will force physicians to spend additional financial and administrative resources to purchase e-prescribing software that most of them will end up discarding when they transition to a complete EHR system," said AMA Secretary Steven J. Stack, MD.
Compounding the issue further is that the law prohibits physicians from receiving incentives from both the Medicare e-prescribing and the meaningful use program for electronic medical records. The AMA and other physician organizations believe the new e-prescribing regulations are duplicative because the EMR incentive program already contains an e-prescribing component.
Consequently, many physicians who decided to forgo purchasing an e-prescribing tool in favor of an EMR system could be left trying to catch up to e-prescribing requirements in early 2011.
So what can be done?
1.Physicians want CMS to extend the reporting period so it includes the first 10 months of 2011.
2.Doctors want CMS to add more exception categories consistent with recommendations made when the proposed rule came out this summer. For example, physicians who attest to meaningful use in 2011 or 2012 should be exempt from penalties associated with the program.
I hope that these reasonable adjustments can be implemented to ease the EHR transformation.

Yours
Bernd