The last Meaningful Use Monday post detoured from the EHR incentives to ePrescribing under MIPPA—given its importance based on the impending schedule of penalties. Because I receive ePrescribing questions on a daily basis, I thought a quick recap of ePrescribing basics might be helpful:

• Incentives and penalties:

*Percent of provider’s total Medicare Part B FFS Allowable Charges. (Incentives assume provider does not receive EHR incentive for that year.)

**Based on 2011 ePrescribing activity

• Incentives are earned per provider, and each provider must individually meet the requirements. This means that some providers within a practice might qualify for an incentive, while others might incur a penalty. (Group reporting options exist, but they are limited and require qualification.)
• Reporting is by G-Code and there is only one: Use G-8553 on the Medicare claim to report that “at least one Rx was generated and transmitted using a qualified ePrescribing system during the patient encounter.”
• Surescripts certification qualifies an ePrescribing system. (This is distinct from the ONC-certification required for meaningful use.)
• Provider eligibility:
  • MD, NP, or PA with prescribing authority
  • At least 100 encounters with the specified CPT codes
  • Specified CPT codes must constitute at least 10% of the provider’s Medicare charges.
• To request exemption from penalties, use the following G-Codes on one Medicare claim before June 30, 2011:
  • Hardship Code G-8642: Rural area with limited high-speed internet access
  • Hardship Code G-8643: Limited pharmacies for ePrescribing
  • G-8664: Although an eligible provider, you do not have prescribing privileges

In a future post, Meaningful Use Monday will look at ePrescribing in the context of meaningful use.

Lynn Scheps is Vice President, Government Affairs at EMR vendor SRSsoft. In this role, Lynn has been a Voice of Physicians and SRSsoft users in Washington during the formulation of the meaningful use criteria. Lynn is currently working to assist SRSsoft users interested in showing meaningful use and receiving the EHR incentive money.

Just back from an exhausting but fruitful #HIMSS11. A highlight was the new media meetup at the MEDecision booth – great to meet you all

February 24, 2011 11:38 am via webReplyRetweetFavorite

@MattA_PCMH

Matt Adamson

I couldn’t agree more with @MattA_PCMH. I’m obviously biased since I organized the event, but the good part is that it far exceeded my expectations. You never know what’s going to happen when the people attending the event essentially came from two blog posts and a bunch of tweets and retweets. As I mentioned at the meetup, It’s also an amazing illustration of the power of social media.

I was highly impressed with the quality of the people that attended. Besides the fact that it’s fun to meet people IRL (in real life) that you feel like you know because you follow them on Twitter and/or their blog, it’s also neat to meet people from across the spectrum of healthcare IT that’s represented at HIMSS. Despite the various differences and backgrounds, we all had one collective bond: interest in New Media (Blogs, Twitter, Facebook, etc). I think that’s what makes this meetup unique, interesting and a lot of fun!

A really big thanks to our main sponsor MEDecision for the food, drinks, venue and Flip video camera giveaways. Thanks also to Ozmosis for sponsoring the iPad giveaway. I think MEDecision must have seen my flip video camera envy, because at the end of the event they were incredibly kind and hooked me up with my own flip video camera. Very classy organization and I can’t wait to see what we can put together for the 3rd Annual New Media Meetup at HIMSS12 in Las Vegas. I told MEDecision we were going to have to go Big since I call Las Vegas home. I’m sure they’ll deliver like they have the past two meetups.

Someone on Twitter also brought up the idea of a Young Professionals meetup at HIMSS. I think I might have to explore this idea a bit more for next year since it would be an interesting compliment to the New Media Meetup. I’ll just have to set the age high enough that I’m considered a young professional.

Now for a few pictures from the New Media Meetup at HIMSS 2011 (click on the pictures twice to see the full picture):

And this video at the tail end of the meetup after most of the people had cleared out, but some familiar faces were still hanging around:

About Sponsors
MEDecision offers collaborative healthcare management solutions that provide a simple and smart way for payers and providers to harness the power of knowledge to enable the best clinical decisions and improve health outcomes. Designed around a patient-aware health management philosophy, MEDecision’s solutions include Alineo, Nexalign, and InFrame.

Ozmosis provides a social powered knowledge management solution to healthcare enterprises. It’s flagship platform, OzmosisESP, enables clinicians, administrators, staff and researchers at hospitals and health systems to collaboratively develop, manage, and share knowledge within a fully integrated and indexed repository of clinical content and user expertise.