E-Prescribe Incentives
The E-Prescribe program provides for an incentive payment to eligible professionals who successfully e-prescribe medications in 2010 equal to 2% of their total Medicare payments for the year. The table below provides the incentive amounts by year:
| Calendar Year |
Incentive Amount |
Penalty Amount |
| 2010 |
2.0% |
- |
| 2011 |
1.0% |
- |
| 2012 |
1.0% |
-1.0% |
| 2013 |
0.5% |
-1.0% |
| 2014 |
|
-2.0% |
E-Prescribe Improves Quality & Cost of Care
Through technology, E-Prescribing offers benefits to the physician in catching potential problems while increasing the overall quality and cost of care:
- Helps pharmacists prevent medication errors that arise due to difficulties in reading or understanding prescriptions.
- E-Prescribing helps the physician reduce adverse drug events by making information such as drug interactions and contra indications available to prescribers at the time they are preparing a prescription.
- E-Prescribing may reduce patient’s out of pocket expenses by placing formulary coverage and copayment information at the prescriber’s fingertips.
Eligibility Criteria
Nearly all office based physicians that have a private practice will meet the required threshold to be eligible for the incentive payments. Physicians for whom office visits, eye exams, psychotherapy or other services listed in the CMS E-Prescribing Measure Specifications represent 10% of their Medicare charges are eligible.
In order to receive incentive payments for e-prescribing, eligible physicians must report the e-prescribing G-code, G8553, at least 25 times for Medicare office visits, as well as the other listed services for the calendar year for the applicable CPT codes included in the CMS E-prescribing Measures Specifications. All physicians for whom these codes comprise 10 percent or more of total Medicare payments will be subject to the penalties that start in 2012 if they are not e-prescribing.