As many of you may have heard, there is a new Medicare/Medicaid law that is scheduled to go into effect January 1, 2009. (Actually, it’s an existing law that has been deferred until now.) The law states that prescriptions cannot be faxed directly from any e-prescribing application (like InfoScriber) to a pharmacy’s fax machine. Rather, if the prescriber wants to fax a prescription to a pharmacy, he must first print it and then manually fax it to the pharmacy. If you’re scratching your head at this point in disbelief, join the gang. It seems like a step backwards. The intent of Medicare is to get prescribers to send more prescriptions via eRx and not by fax. This intent, I believe, while noble, is impractical.

 

To make matters worse, in response to this upcoming law, it appears that some major pharmacy chains like are beginning to change their fax lines to tie into their main telephone switchboard lines and require users to press a button to choose to fax. What this does is prevents electronic prescribing applications to fax directly to a fax machine (i.e., it will now require human intervention to know what number to press based on each pharmacy’s menu options).

 

If you are using an electronic prescribing application that currently faxes directly to fax machines, you may begin experiencing increased fax failures.

 

In response to these changes, we encourage you to send your prescriptions electronically whenever possible and avoid faxing. When you do have to fax (eg, controlled substances, etc.), it may be necessary to print out the prescription and manually fax (depending on the pharmacies to which you are sending).