Incentives move doctors to e-prescribe; hospitals slow to join HIT exchanges

"The number of U.S. physicians and other medical professionals prescribing electronically is expected to more than double this year, enticed by higher Medicare payments tied to the technology's use," Dow Jones Newswires/Wall Street Journal reports. Only about one-quarter of doctors are currently e-prescribing, and only 110 million of 3.7 billion prescriptions in the first eight months of this year were written electronically. In January, Medicare began a program to pay a 2 percent bonus for physicians who start e-prescribing; smaller bonuses will be available in future years, through 2013 (Knight, 10/5).

Meanwhile, despite federal stimulus money backing the effort, hospitals have been slow to join health information exchanges, even when they are readily available, reports Crain's Detroit Business. That's a problem, because they control the greatest concentration of patient records among any providers, and the value of the exchange to all members increases as more records become available. "The reasons [for hospital's reluctance] are complex but come down to some combination of money, competitive strategy and technological challenge" (Gardner, 10/4).

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This article was reprinted from khn.org with permission from the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation. Kaiser Health News, an editorially independent news service, is a program of the Kaiser Family Foundation, a nonpartisan health care policy research organization unaffiliated with Kaiser Permanente.