New public and private initiatives could spur rollout of e-prescribing

WASHINGTON —Two events unfolded in recent weeks that could help ignite the fitful drive among pharmacy and other health care stakeholders for the rapid nationwide adoption of electronic prescribing and data-driven health care.

The most recent is the launch of a new advertising campaign to promote e-prescribing in the Medicare program by the Pharmaceutical Care Management Association, the group representing pharmacy benefit management companies. Universal adoption of electronic prescriptions and health IT could save pharmacy benefit managers big sums by reducing the costs of medication errors, building up a massive database of patient drug therapy compliance and outcomes and streamlining drug-dispensing and reporting.

Citing a PCMA-sponsored study conducted by the Gorman Health Group, the organization asserts that e-prescribing could prevent up 1.9 million medication errors over the next decade if physicians utilized the technology in Medicare. “Along with reducing medication errors, the study also found that even after providing funds for equipment and training, the federal government could save $26 billion,” PCMA noted.

PCMA unveiled a print ad July 19 that features a baseball scoreboard that highlights the 1.9 million medication errors and urges Congress to “get in the game” by requiring Medicare doctors to use e-prescribing.

“At a time when Congress is considering a $30 billion payment update for Medicare physicians, it should also consider requiring Medicare doctors to use e-prescribing,” said PCMA president Mark Merritt.

The new ad campaign comes in support of a second development earlier last month: the release of a plan by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services to eliminate the “fax exception” that Congress extended to doctors as part of the Medicare Modernization Act of 2003. Under that exception, Congress allowed doctors to continue to fax prescriptions to pharmacies for scripts filled under the Medicare Part D drug benefit program.

CMS’ proposed rule would establish a deadline for the elimination of computer-generated faxes by Jan.1, 2009. The new rule also would require all electronic prescriptions to comply with the NCPDP Script Standard.

Physicians still heavily rely on faxes to transmit prescriptions to pharmacies, often without realizing that many of them possess the software to establish an e-prescribing link with those pharmacies. The effect of the proposed rule, noted CMS in a statement, would be “eliminating the exemption for computer-generated faxes from the e-prescribing standards.”

Acting CMS administrator Leslie Norwalk called the proposed rule change “an important new initiative to encourage the use of electronic prescribing to improve the speed and accuracy of care furnished to [Medicare] beneficiaries.”