Electronic Prescribing

• Starting in 2009, physicians can earn an additional 2% bonus on their allowed Medicare charges by using a qualified electronic software program and submitting documentation on their regularly submitted billing forms to Medicare. Penalties start kicking in for physicians not using eRx in 2012.
• The CSMS-IPA incentive program will help reduce the financial barriers to implementing eRx by paying the upfront software and training costs for one year. Physicians do not have to pay those upfront costs until they receive their bonus payment from Medicare.
• A physician must be using an approved eRx program and document appropriately on 50% of all qualified claims (E&M services) submitted during a calendar year in order to receive the Medicare bonus. Realistically, a physician starting today would not qualify for a bonus for 2009. Therefore, payment to the IPA would not be due until after they are scheduled to receive their 2010 bonus – sometime in 2011.

PQRI

• For calendar year 2009, Medicare is paying physicians a 2% bonus for submitting quality data to them.
• There are 2 ways to submit PQRI data: Claims based – generally a year long process of submitting claims data on all FFS Medicare claims; or, Registry based – a convenient, 30 consecutive patient process that requires submission of clinical data through an approved registry.