What is the Electronic Prescribing (eRx) Incentive Program?
The Electronic Prescribing (eRx) Incentive Program is Medicare’s program that encourages providers to use electronic prescribing to improve communication, increase accuracy, and reduce errors.
Section 132 of the Medicare Improvements for Patients and Providers Act of 2008 (MIPPA) authorizes a combination of incentives and payment adjustments to encourage eligible professionals to be successful electronic prescribers. To participate in the Electronic Prescribing (eRx) Incentive Program, individual eligible professionals must report on their adoption and use of a qualified eRx system by submitting information on the eRx measure. The eRx Incentive Program requirements and measure specifications may change from year to year, so it is important that eligible professionals use the correct program year documents.
Who is Eligible to Participate in the Electronic Prescribing Incentive Program?
Eligible professionals include:
- Physicians
- Practitioners
- Physical and Occupational Therapists
- Speech-Language Pathologists
To participate, eligible professionals must:
- provide services that are paid under the Medicare Physician Fee Schedule
- have prescribing authority
How Do I Know If a Physician or Healthcare Professional Participated in the Electronic Prescribing Incentive Program?
Eligible professionals who successfully participated in the eRx Incentive Program in 2010 will have an indicator on their profile page.
A successful eRx participant includes all eligible professionals, as identified by their National Provider Identifier (NPI), who reported on their adoption and use of a qualified eRx system and met the criteria for being a "successful electronic prescriber." Specifically, they participated by submitting claims information on the eRx measure on their Medicare Part B claims and submitting the eRx measure in at least 50% of the cases in which the measure is reported by the professional during 2010.
What Are Incentive Payments?
Physicians and healthcare professionals identified on this Web site as successful electronic prescribers under the 2010 eRx Incentive Program didn't necessarily qualify to earn an eRx incentive payment. A successful electronic prescriber has prescribed electronically at least 25 times. To earn an incentive, at least 10% of a professional's Medicare Part B covered services must be made up of codes that appear in the denominator of the eRx measure.
Download the list of eligible professionals who successfully reported the eRx measure for 2010.*
Eligible professionals who are part of a group practice may also have the option to report the eRx measure as a group, instead of as an individual.
Download the list of group practices who chose to take part in Medicare's eRx Incentive Program Group Practice Reporting Option (GPRO) and reported quality measure information successfully for the year 2010.*
* Updated participation information will be published with the Physician Compare Redesign launch in early 2013.