Texas Medical Association: Push back e-prescribing deadline

With the June 30 deadline fast approaching, the nation’s largest state medical association urged the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) to give physicians more time to begin e-prescribing.

Physicians who haven’t reported 10 e-prescriptions by the end of June will be subject to a 1% penalty on Medicare allowable charges in 2012.

In addition to asking for a 3-month extension for all physicians to October 1, 2011, the Texas Medical Association (TMA) strongly encouraged CMS to provide an automatic exemption for physicians who attest that they intend to e-prescribe by October 1, 2012, under the “meaningful use” incentive program for electronic health records. The October 2012 date would align the e-prescribing program with the e-prescribing requirements of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.

TMA contends that physicians may use an e-prescribing system to meet the minimum and then abandon the system, which would cause communications from pharmacies to be ignored and “create confusion for patients, physicians, and pharmacies, and possibly lead to unnecessary and dangerous refill delays for some patients.”

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