I feel that this thing is so wrong that it'll be like what happened when Hillary Clinton tried to radically force socialized medicine onto the American public, all the while lining up those lobbying entities that will make the big bucks- first there was a lot of noise, then a lot of confusion, then the anger, followed by the reality leading to the eventual death of the proposed legislation. Currently although 75% of pharmacies are e-prescribing capable, only 2% of new prescriptions are handled using e-prescribing.
>>> Roy, I'll join you if you resign your membership. I resigned my 23 years of membership in all of my societies in 2003 since I felt at that time that they were doing NOTHING for my bottom line- these included the AMA, the ACP, the Fairfax County Medical Society, and the Virginia Medical Society. Things have worsened since then. Why give out $2000 or more in joint fees to these and similar societies? You have to be nuts!
>>> SureScripts does not market e-prescribing software.If you look at my slideshow,
HIT_in_the_USA25.ppt , I explain e-prescribing in depth. The way SureScripts gets paid is that each pharmacy software vendor is charged a transaction fee. Each provider will eventually have to pay about $300 to $500 a year to their EHR software providers if e-prescribing is included. (So Brian's $460 price tag was right on target.)
Surescripts was formed in 2001 and is a pharmacy owned LLC ((( HIMSS vendor ))), and represents a network provider of electronic prescribing services with its stated mission being the "improvement of the prescribing process", but its real mission is to make a heck of a lot of money. Just like HIMSS is part of CCHIT, it is part of this process too.
Brian >>> SureScripts also acts as a certifying body, like CCHIT, that approves e-prescribers. Yup, and in my personal discussion of Surescripts with Tom Galland, an EMR vendor who works nearby my office in Maryland, it is costly and rigorous, taking about 8 months to become certified.
As said earlier, you can still print out your prescriptions as well as use a manual prescription pad- you just can't FAX prescriptions. The reason for this no-FAX mandate is nebulous. Faxing is described in this article as some sort of "loophole" that needed to be closed- "CMS drops e-prescribing loophole",
http://www.fiercehealthit.com/story/cms-drops-e-prescribing-loophole/2007-07-09 . Surescripts has the power to destroy Medicare as we know it. It's a shame; we are all doing what we can to take care of the old and the crippled. All CMS does is to spit on our efforts with stuff like this.
