Industry experts say CMS' elimination last week of an exemption that allowed prescriptions to be faxed, rather than sent electronically, will not cause any immediate problems because of the significant amount of time before the change takes effect, Modern Healthcare reports.
"We anticipate having this change effective one year after the effective date of the (calendar year) 2008 (physician fee schedule) final rule," according to a CMS spokesperson.
Kane St. John -- COO and general counsel for JMJ Technologies, an electronic health record vendor -- said, "Because the rule will not take effect until sometime in 2009, there will be no near-term problems created for end-users -- either prescribers or dispensers."
CMS changed its policy because few prescribers and pharmacies using computer-generated fax technology have transitioned to electronic prescriptions. CMS cited SureScripts' market information indicating that only 20% of independent pharmacies can send and receive the National Council for Prescription Drug Programs' Script transactions, which is the standard for e-prescriptions (Conn, Modern Healthcare, 7/3).
"It is now up to private industry to seize upon this important proposed change in Medicare policy," Kevin Hutchinson, CEO and president of SureScripts, said (Health Data Management, 7/3).
CMS also cited SureScripts' estimate "that of the 150,000 prescribers now using software that is capable of generating NCPDP Script transactions, only 15% are doing so."
Charles Webster, chief medical informatics officer for JMJ Technologies, said he supports the premise that eliminating faxed prescriptions would be beneficial, although he said he doubts SureScripts' estimates. He added, "There's a lot of legacy software out there that may happen to have the same name as some more modern version but will not be painless to upgrade."
Richard Spurr -- chair and CEO of Zix, a developer of e-prescribing tools -- said physicians using his company's e-prescribing services do not know whether they are sending prescriptions via fax or the Script standard because the software is behind the interface.
Spurr added that between 50% and 80% of Zix e-prescriptions are sent with electronic data exchange, rather than faxes. "This (rule change) benefits retail pharmacy industry, period. And one would say that there is at least some impact on safety, and there is nothing wrong with that," he said (Modern Healthcare, 7/3).