In a former blog post, we wrote about Incentives to Doctors for Prescribing Electronically. In follow-up to that, we hosted several ePrescribing webinars to detail the incentive that the federal government is offering to physicians, effective January of 2009, through Medicare reimbursement. Our webinars yielded some questions that we thought would be beneficial to share. Commonly asked questions about the Medicare ePrescribing Initiative: 1. How do you know if the pharmacy you want to submit the script to is accepting them electronically? a. 95% of pharmacies currently accept e-Scripts b. If a pharmacy does not accept e-Scrips then a fax will be sent in its place c. It won’t be the burden of the physician to determine if a pharmacy accepts e-Scripts or not 2. Is the e-prescribing incentive strictly for Medicare? a. Physicians will only receive the incentive for Medicare claims, but, all scripts will be sent electronically — regardless of whether the patient is on Medicare or not 3. What exactly will the drug history show on your solution for e-prescribing? a. 6 months of drug history, from every physician they have seen 4. How will refill requests be handled on your solution for e-prescribing? a. Refill requests will come from the pharmacy directly into our e-prescribing solution b. Generally, they will need to be addressed by the practice within 48 hours 5. Can you print the script information to include in the paper chart? a. Yes, after you complete the script and it is sent, you can print a copy for the chart 6. What if someone calls in for a refill? a. Within our e-prescribing solution, you send a request for a refill to the corresponding physician and they can then accept or reject the request 7. How are scripts for controlled substances handled? a. Controlled substances are currently not permitted to be handled electronically. You can still print it or write one as necessary. 8. What is the cost for your e-prescribing solution? a. $49 per month per physician plus nominal setup fees that may apply 9. Can the information from your e-prescribing solution be transferred to another electronic medical record if the practice changes systems? a. Yes 10. Does your e-prescribing solution work with The Medical Manager software? a. Yes. 11. How does patient information transfer from Medical Manager to your e-prescribing solution? a. It happens in real-time. Each time you update Medical Manager, the information is securely transferred to our e-prescribing solution b. There is also the possibility of doing a large “data dump” on the onset To get more information about our e-prescribing solution, call us at 800.781.1044 and ask for Rick Adams, or, post a question here.