Senators and administration agree: Require e-prescribing in Medicare

I guess the hardship waivers would be for those MDs who don't have a computer yet as the software can be free with NEPSI...and think of the trees that will be saved in the process...bonus, if the bill goes through would depend on how far back one began using e-prescribing....BD

The Bush administration and leading Senate Democrats appear to have found something on which they can agree: an e-prescribing requirement for doctors in exchange for their avoiding a reduction in Medicare payments.
At a Capitol Hill press conference today, a bipartisan group of senators led by Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.) and Sen. John Ensign (R-Nev.) announced the introduction of a bill that would give doctors permanent Medicare fee bonuses for acquiring and using e-prescribing systems.
The legislation, which House lawmakers were also introducing, would give doctors a deadline to start writing their Medicare outpatient prescriptions electronically. If they are not doing so by Jan. 1, 2011, they would face cuts in their Medicare reimbursements.
The Kerry-Ensign bill also would give Medicare doctors bonuses of between $1,000 and $2,000 -- depending on when they began e-prescribing -- for adopting the technology. It would also authorize HHS to grant hardship waivers for doctors who face unusual difficulties in implementing e-prescribing.