CMS offers e-prescribing guide

This week, CMS issued its own guide to e-prescribing, including one section addressed to office-based clinicians new to e-prescribing and the other helping office-based clinicians who already understand the technology and hope to implement it soon. The publication, "A Clinician's Guide to Electronic Prescribing," was released at CMS's National E-Prescribing Conference.

CMS has gradually been throwing its weight behind e-prescribing over the past couple of years. For one thing, in mid-2007 it eliminated a regulatory loophole allowing providers and pharmacies to fax prescriptions rather than send them electronically and approved Part D e-prescribing standards.

More recently, the agency rolled out a new set of e-prescribing incentives and penalties [1], offering Medicare bonuses to physicians who adopt the technology through 2013 and steadily larger Medicare reimbursement cuts to those who don't through 2014.

To learn more about the guide:
- read this Heathcare IT News article [2]
- read the CMS report [3] (.pdf)

Related Articles:
CMS drops e-prescribing loophole [4]
CMS approves Part D e-prescribing standards [5]
Feds outline Medicare incentive for e-prescribing [1]