MIPPA Provides Incentives for E-Prescribing

By Rich Silverman

American health care providers write close to 3 billion prescriptions per year, according to a number of estimates, with about 80% of them being written by hand. A recent study conducted by the Weill Cornell Medical School in New York found that about 4 of every 10 handwritten prescriptions had an error while the rate of errors found in electronic prescriptions is around one-seventh of that, or about 6%.

If those numbers hold true, then almost 1 billion prescriptions each year have an error in them. Small wonder, then, that the government has enacted legislation to encourage providers to switch to electronic prescribing.

Amid the sea of health technology acronyms like HIPAA, HITECH, HIT and EMR floats one we’ve not addressed so far – MIPPA, the Medicare Improvement for Patients and Providers Act of 2008 (we’re really not making this one up). The act contains provisions relating to a host of issues such as physician quality reporting, physician payments and – the one we’re addressing here – electronic prescribing.

Structured with incentives to encourage physicians to adopt electronic prescribing, MIPPA provides for payments of up to 2% of qualifying Medicare billings during 2010 by using a qualified e-prescribing or Electronic Health Record system that meets all of the following requirements:

* Generates a complete active medication list
* Selects medications, prints and electronically transmits prescriptions and conducts all alerts
* Recommends available alternatives that are less expensive and therapeutically appropriate
* Provides information on tiered formulary medications, eligibility and insurance authorization
* Meets specified software technical requirements

Incentives will continue at up to 2% through 2010, drop to 1% in 2011 and 2012, and .5% in 2013. Beginning as early as 2012, penalties for NOT using e-prescribing can and will be assessed by Medicare, rising to as high as a 2% reduction in payments.

As with all government programs, there is a host of fine print to wade through, and there are multiple ifs and ands to deal with, but the overall program does provide incentives to you to adopt electronic prescribing. To help you navigate all that verbiage, HHS has created a comprehensive FAQ section on its website.

If you expect to qualify for incentive payments offered by the government for the adoption of an EMR/EHR system, you will need to be engaged in e-prescribing, because e-prescribing will be an integral part of the definition of meaningful use. And grumble all you want about how that implementation of an e-Prescribing system may require work up front, but the benefits that will accrue to you down the line, such as reduced errors and far fewer phone calls using up your staff time to resolve prescribing problems, will more than make up for it.

http://www.eprescriptionservices.com/mippa-incentives-eprescribing/