By Steven Reinberg
HealthDay Reporter
Monday, July 21, 2008; 12:00 AM

MONDAY, July 21 (HealthDay News) — Starting next year, doctors can earn additional money from Medicare if they use electronic prescribing systems, U.S. health officials said Monday.

The bonus program, which will continue for four years, is designed to streamline the prescription process and cut down on errors. In 2009 and 2010, Medicare will give doctors an additional 2 percent bonus on top of their fee for “e-prescribing.” In 2011 and 2012, the bonus will drop to 1 percent, and in 2013, the bonus will drop again to 0.5 percent, officials said.

“There are terrific human and financial costs to illegible prescriptions,” Mike Leavitt, secretary of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, said during a Monday afternoon teleconference.

According to the Institute of Medicine, 1.5 million Americans are injured every year by drug errors, Leavitt said. Another study found that each year pharmacists make more than 150 million phone calls to doctors to clarify what was written on the prescription, he added.
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Statement attributable to: J. James Rohack, M.D.
President-elect, American Medical Association

“Today the American Medical Association celebrates that the Senate heard the voices of patients and physicians and voted to stop Medicare physician payment cuts that would have hurt seniors’ access to care by a bipartisan, veto-proof majority of 69 to 30. We especially appreciate the heroic efforts of Sen. Edward Kennedy, who made this critical vote his first after his surgery. We also applaud those senators who put patients first and voted yes even though they had concerns about the process or some of the bill’s provisions.

“Now we – along with seniors, the disabled, and military families – call on President Bush to sign this bill into law to protect access to health care for so many deserving Americans.

“On July 1, a Medicare physician payment cut of 10.6 percent went into effect, putting access to health care for seniors, the disabled and military families at risk. In the first week of July, tens of thousands of patients and physicians contacted their senators and urged them to vote for HR 6331. Those voices were heard and heeded.

“Just two weeks ago, the same bill – HR 6331 – passed the House of Representatives by an overwhelming, bipartisan, veto-proof majority of 355 to 59.

“Now we urge President Bush to hear and heed the voices of seniors, the disabled and military families – and sign the bill into law for the health of America.”

Gov. David A. Paterson’s measures aimed at improving patient safety and putting more teeth into physician discipline drew a mixed reaction yesterday from experts in health care and the legal profession.

During his news briefing yesterday, Paterson alluded to Dr. Harvey Finkelstein, the Long Island physician caught in controversy after more than 10,000 of his patients were notified they might have been exposed to hepatitis C, B and HIV.

Under the governor’s plan, physicians would not be able to practice while an investigation is under way. But that denies doctors the right of due process, said Dr. Melissa Palmer, a liver specialist in Plainview who evaluated dozens of Finkelstein’s patients for liver disease. “What happened to innocent until proven guilty?” she said yesterday.
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The findings aren’t new, but the sheer size of the study confirms what earlier research suggested.

Docs know they provide better care, faster, when they switch from paper to electronic medical records. They just don’t want to spend the money to heal more patients and kill fewer.

According to the New England Journal of Medicine, a poll of 2.758 doctors (with a 62 percent response rate) found that 17 percent were using some form of electronic record system.

But those who do use electronic record systems rave about them.

Among the small number of respondents who had fully functional electronic-records systems, most physicians reported the positive effects of the system on the quality of clinical decisions (82%), communication with other providers (92%) and patients (72%), prescription refills (95%), timely access to medical records (97%), and avoidance of medication errors (86%). Furthermore, 82 to 85% reported a positive effect on the delivery of long-term and preventive care that meets guidelines.

But those results probably underestimate the importance of electronic records because they don’t consider the benefit that patients will get when it’s easy for them to import all their own medical records into the personal health systems I wrote about earlier this week.
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