e-Prescribing

Smartphone Electronic Prescribing – If you don’t have it, you need it

Published on March 11, 2013 by hfblogadmin in e-Prescribing. 0 Comments

If you are an EHR user – ePrescribing on your Smartphone is a convenience that you really shouldn’t live without. Medical Professionals need to view themselves as mobile providers with the newfound ability to respond to patient requests “everywhere and anywhere”. Meeting the needs of patients when you are away from the office and on-the-go will improve patient satisfaction. Since the release of the iPad the world has shifted to essentially 3 form factors for computing.

  1. The traditional desktop or laptop computer (not very mobile but very versatile)
  2. The mobile tablet (iPad) for work away from the desktop – like in the exam room
  3. The Smartphone – limited in its utility compared to a desktop, but highly mobile

 Providers need an EHR that gives them the flexibility to use the appropriate hardware form factor for a specific time and place of use. Medical charting full-time on a Smartphone is not practical – possible yes – but just not enough landscape for fast-charting a full encounter note. Reviewing your schedule and mobile prescribing on a Smartphone make a lot of sense. These are 2 activities that are built into the MediTouch EHR Smartphone Web App.

 Smartphone electronic prescribing should not be viewed as an additional burden for the provider; in fact it is a new time management tool like the “Blackberry Effect”. When the Blackberry first became popular it was the de facto mobile email system. Its users loved it because it replaced “downtime” like waiting in a line at the airport. Returning emails in the airport saved the busy traveler the time it would have taken to perform the same task when they returned home to their clunky desktop PC. The same holds true for mobile prescribing. Let’s say you are attending a baseball game and you are notified that one of your patients requires a prescription, you probably don’t have your iPad and you definitely don’t have your desktop. It is in between innings and you have 2-3 minutes of downtime till the next pitch – well that’s all the time it takes to fulfill your patients’ prescription request with the MediTouch Mobile ePrescribing Web App. When you return home or back to the office – just one less thing to do.

 The MediTouch Mobile ePrescribing Web Application is really our same award winning EHR prescribing interface – just reformatted for the Smartphone. It includes the same powerful drug-to-allergy and drug-to-drug interaction warnings and it also displays the patient’s Allergy and Problem list.

 

 

Remember there is always the “right tool for every job” and the MediTouch Mobile Web App for ePrescribing is the best tool for physicians to respond to patient medication requests on-the-go! Best of all it is provided for FREE in every implementation of MediTouch EHR.

e-Prescribing (eRx) Incentive Program Hardship Exemptions from CMS

Published on November 26, 2012 by Marty Briggs in e-Prescribing. 0 Comments

On November 1st the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) made an adjustment to the 2013 Electronic Prescribing (eRx) Program’s payment exemptions. CMS’ adjustment finalized two new e-Prescribing hardship exemption categories pertaining to the EHR Medicare and Medicaid Incentive Program in the 2013 Medicare Physician Fee Schedule Rule. The new eRx hardship exemptions from CMS are as follows:

  • Eligible professionals who achieve meaningful use during certain eRx timeframes. For the 2013 eRx payment adjustment, this will include any eligible professional who achieved meaningful use during January 1, 2011 through June 30, 2012 and has attested to this by January 31, 2013.

  • Eligible professionals who demonstrate intent to participate in the EHR Incentive Program and adoption of Certified EHR Technology by registering for the EHR Incentive Program by January 31, 2013. Please note: EHR Incentive Program participants must provide their entire EHR Certification Number in the CMS EHR Certification ID field during registration to receive this hardship.
Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS)

Prior to the adjustments made on November 1st to the eRx incentive program, CMS was acting unfairly toward many eligible professionals who were trying diligently to implement the e-Prescribing program. CMS required the use of G codes in healthcare claims to prove that providers were compliant with e-Prescribing, and then also made those very same providers attest to the utilization of eRx as part of Meaningful Use. In one of our previous blog posts titled, “Hundreds of Thousands of Dollars Lost in Penalties — Is that motivation enough?”, we stated that the “incentive” programs are, “really penalty programs with just a taste of incentive in the early years.” Healthcare stakeholders obviously felt the same as we did, and with this adjustment CMS is attempting to rectify the unfairness. Eligible professionals now only need to register or attest for the EHR Incentive Program by January 31, 2013 to avoid penalty, even if they did not use the G code method of attesting to eRx use. However, if an eligible professional previously registered for the EHR Incentive Program but did not supply the EHR Certification Number for their EHR product at that time, and has not since achieved meaningful use, they need to go back and add that piece of information to their registration before January 31, 2013.

CMS is listening to feedback from vendors and providers alike, this adjustment is evidence of that. Be sure to double check if you qualify for the new eRx exemptions, and join HealthFusion in the evolving conversation with CMS. You can always stay current on industry news and happenings with HealthFusion’s EHR Blog.

Electronic Prescribing of Controlled Substances (EPCS) — An update from HealthFusion®

Published on July 3, 2012 by Marty Briggs in e-Prescribing. 0 Comments
Electronic Prescribing of Controlled Substances (EPCS) on iPad Tablet by Pharmacist

The Electronic Prescribing of Controlled Substances (EPCS) was proposed by the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) as a way for medical practitioners to write electronic prescriptions (eRx) for narcotics and other controlled substances. The EPCS regulation also permits pharmacies to fill and dispense the controlled substances after receiving a qualified practitioner’s eRx. e-Prescribing is intended to reduce paperwork and costs for prescribers and pharmacists, as well as reduce prescription forgery and fraud, while integrating the prescription information into electronic health records (EHRs). Although the DEA legislated a solution for the electronic prescribing of controlled substances in 2010, the requirements in that rule are extensive, and therefore require an infrastructure that was not in place when the rule was passed into law. This new infrastructure impacts SureScripts®, the practitioner, and all of the retail pharmacies. In the next several months, that infrastructure may be ready for those providers who are highly motivated to prescribe controlled substances electronically. Continue reading…

Hundreds of Thousands of Dollars Lost in Penalties — Is that motivation enough?

Published on June 13, 2012 by Seth Flam DO in e-Prescribing. 0 Comments
CMS US Capital Building

Be Sure to Read the CMS Fine Print

I am convinced that some of the best marketing I have recently witnessed is related to the materials published by the government regarding the various provider “incentive” programs. Let’s face it, these incentive programs are really penalty programs with just a taste of incentive in the early years. The names of these programs: EHR Incentive Program, PQRS Incentive Program, eRx Incentive Program… great marketing, but misleading. In fact, CMS does not usually use the word “penalty” when providing details about the programs; instead, the word of art is payment “adjustment”. Whether providers choose to participate early and take advantage of the initial incentive years or wait till later and run the risk of penalty may be based on how that provider responds to motivational queues.

According to Harvard University research related to behavioral economics and the relationship between financial incentives and motivation, one of the key concepts is loss aversion. Say you take the same amount of money and you offer it as a reward, or use it as a penalty; people are much more motivated by a loss than by gain! Someone at CMS has done their homework; if loss aversion is a great motivator, then there is plenty of potential loss to motivate a medical group to conform to the CMS programs. Continue reading…

The eRx 2011 Saga Continues — Avoid penalties: adopt MediTouch EHR® and register for the Medicare EHR incentive program.

Published on September 7, 2011 by Seth Flam DO in e-Prescribing. 0 Comments
Electronic Prescription eRx

This blog is the third in a series of blogs related to the bureaucracy of the Medicare eRx program.

On February 24, 2010, in our blog titled, The Electronic Prescribing (eRx) Incentive Program — A lot of stick, not too much carrot, we discussed how the 2011 e-Prescribing (eRx) program was not properly aligned with the more encompassing Meaningful Use incentive program. The conclusion at the time was that users of certified EHR technology were unfairly required to report the Medicare e-Prescribing G-codes on at least 10 claims between January and June of this year (2011), in addition to reporting the eRx measure when attesting to Meaningful Use. At the time, our medical team responded to this requirement by providing the codes in our procedure coding section of the SOAP note, creating a reminder for our users, and making it simple for them to express these codes on at least 10 claims. Continue reading…

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