Medicare Compliance & Reimbursement

What new health information technologies are headed your way? A new initiative from the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services will be gearing up to ensure that HITs score a home-run in your office. CMS said July 21 that it was "moving aggressively" to pilot test an Internet-based portal for Medicare patients to access their claims information in a way that will better protect privacy and information security. Findings could help pave the way for a nationwide program. New efforts are also underway to accelerate the adoption of electronic prescribing and electronic health records in physician offices. The Medicare Modernization Act established that e-prescribing will be mandatory for drug plans under Medicare Part D by 2009 -- but CMS says it will require an initial set of standards to be implemented by January 2006. Physician participation in e-prescribing is optional, but CMS says the technology can improve patient safety and reduce avoidable healthcare costs. E-prescribing can:

reduce prescription errors due to hard-to-read physician handwriting,
automatically check for drug interactions and allergies, and
ensure that professionals have the "best and latest" information at hand to enhance medical decision-making. CMS is also pushing demonstration programs that study how financial incentives might encourage practices to adopt electronic health records.