Payers and health plans have pushed for new incentives for electronic prescription in 2009. For example, in January, Medicare paid doctors a bonus if they exchanged their prescription pads over to e-prescribing. Various private health plans have also offered extra payments along with free equipment.

Free software is available thanks to technology companies. These are given away to encourage doctors to go electronic. Free software normally provides what you paid for it. For example, there is little or no support when you sign up for free solutions.

What the stats say: According to Web sources, the number of physicians prescribing medicines electronically has more than doubled in the past year to about 70,000 (about 12 percent of all office-based doctors). The increase is owing to the incentives introduced at the start of the year. Try not to fall in the 88 percent bracket still holding out in 2010 while throwing out two percent of your Medicare income and possibly other bonuses from private payers.

So have you applied electronic prescription processes? If not you could be missing out on a two percent Medicare bonus. Here's what you can do to ensure an easy transition.

Before you get going, it is essential that you ask yourself if you want to practice e-prescribing using a stand-alone system or one that is part of an electronic health records (EHR).

Pros and cons:

• Standalone systems are the least expensive and the fastest to implement. But EHRs have additional features that aid in managing a medical practice over the long run.
• Standalones will enable the practice to be up in time for 2010 to optimize the bonus.
• Standalone systems may have the capability to interface with a PM or EHR system.
• The practice can then convert from a standalone system to an integrated system when an EHR is implemented.

But the good news is you do not have to have an EMR (electronic medical record) system to e-prescribe. You can find standalone e-prescription systems such as online options that come much cheaper than a full-blown EMR.

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Labels: e-prescribing, electronic health records, EMR, era