e-Prescribing compulsary for U.S. Physicians by 2011

e-Prescribing or Electronic Prescribing implies that physicians prescribe medications and devices using software applications instead of writing them by hand. According to this article, a bill is on the way that seeks to make e-prescribing mandatory by 2011 for physicians treating Medicare and Medicaid patients. Physicians will receive a bonus for using e-Prescriptions, and will be penalized for not doing so.

Meanwhile CMS is busy setting up National standards for e-prescription usage and recommends using National Council for Prescription Drug Programs SCRIPT Standard 8.1 (NCPDP SCRIPT 8.1). Download the rules on the standard here (PDF) . What does this mean ? It means that the e-prescription software should use that format specified by NCPDP SCRIPT 8.1 for storing and transmitting prescription data.

The National e-Prescribing Patient Safety Initiative (NEPSI) already provides a free web-based e-prescription application based on Allscript's eRx application, to every physician in the USA. Check out their cool Demo here.

I find the bonus part a bit bothersome in principle. Physicians are in the profession of healing and saving patients lives - and if hand-written prescription errors are known to be error-prone and even kill - should not physicians be going electronic anyways, based on their Hippocratic oaths ?

A July 2006 study showed that 1.5 Million people were injured and about 7000 were killed due to prescription errors . So giving bonuses for e-prescriptions is basically paying physicians to not kill patients by their handwritings. "Patients might die, but not if we are paid to not do so" ;-)


Also Read:

- Advantages of e-Prescription over hand-written prescriptions



Search keywords to this blog article:

- Do physicians have to use electronic prescribing for writing prescriptions in United States