Rx managers pushing to include e-prescribing in Medicare pay bill

The AMA opposes the mandate but supports a voluntary system with adequate financial incentives.

By David Glendinning, AMNews staff. Nov. 26, 2007.

Washington -- A war of words escalated earlier this month when a group of pharmacy benefit managers increased the pressure on Congress to pass what the American Medical Association warned would be a costly Medicare electronic prescribing requirement for physicians.

The Pharmaceutical Care Management Assn. since the summer has been pushing lawmakers to include an e-prescribing mandate in any legislation to prevent next year's 10.1% Medicare physician pay cut. Now the PCMA has launched a tough television and print advertising campaign.

"The time for debates and studies is over. Washington needs to require e-prescribing in Medicare before more people die," the speaker on the TV spot says.

The reference is to last year's Institute of Medicine recommendation that all physicians embrace e-prescribing by 2010. The goal is to help reduce the estimated 1.5 million medication errors and 7,000 patient deaths that occur annually. The speaker in the ad is J. Lyle Bootman, PhD, ScD, the dean of the University of Arizona College of Pharmacy and chair of the IOM panel that studied the issue.

PCMA also started running a print advertisement directed at lawmakers. "While you wait, thousands die each year," begins the ad. It states that an e-prescribing mandate is needed in Medicare because seniors constitute many of the deaths.

The AMA supports using e-prescribing to help improve patient safety but says that an unfunded mandate would be the wrong approach. In Oct. 31 letters to Sen. John Kerry (D, Mass.) and Rep. Allyson Schwartz (D, Pa.), the AMA called for e-prescribing legislation that combines voluntary adoption with robust federal funding for those who decide to use the technology. The two lawmakers have expressed an interest in taking the lead on Medicare e-prescribing legislation.