The Center for Medicare and Medicai...

The Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) and the Office of the Inspector General have propos novel regulations that would help physicians adopt e-prescribing and electronic health records (EHR) theorys CMS announced a new regulatory proposal that would create exceptions to the "physician self-referral" law. commonly physicians in Medicare are prohibited from referring Medicare patients for certain services to health care entities with which the physician has a financial relationship, unles an exception applies. Health care entities also are not allowed to bill Medicare for services that are provided as a deduction of a prohibited referral. The recently made known proposals would allow hospitals and certain health care organizations to provide hardware, software, and related training services to physicians for e-prescribing and EHR particularly when the support involves connected views that can exchange information securely In a parallel action, the Office of the Inspector General announced propos safe harbors for arrangements involving the donation of technology for e-prescribing and EHR Arrangements for the provision of items and services that befitting the requirements of the safe harbors would be exempted from enforcement action under the federal anti-kickback statute. undivided proposal would establish the conditions subject to which hospitals and other entities can give physicians hardware, software, information technology, and training services for e-prescribing. The next to the first proposal would establish the conditions in a less degree than which such entities may donate to physicians EHR software and related training services. The propos masterships were published in the Oct 5 2005 edition of the Federal Register, and public make notess are being accepted.

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