Home Forums Discussions Meaningful Use 2012 ERX EMR PQRS medicare

I just read the AMA News article dated Feb 13,2012 but I am still confused. I thought, for some reason, that if you are getting EMR meaningful use money, you no longer qualify for ERX and PQRS money. The article didn't seem to address this. I am doing meaningful use EHR in 2012, should I still be submitting G8553 on medicare claims for ERX? Should I still be submitting the Quality codes on claims? The bonus for ERS in 2012 is 1%. The bonus for EHR in 2012 is $12-18K. PQRS is 0.5-1%

confusing issues, indeed.
The answers I obtained from the Maine Regional Extension Center:
You can participate in MU and PQRS.
You can participate in ERx and PQRS.
You CANNOT participate in MU and ERx.

HOWEVER, you must continue to report G8553 for ERx otherwise you will get assessed the penalty for not ERx'ing.

Yes I know this is retarded...You attest to ERx'ing in MU, so why can't they tell you are ERx'ing under MU and therefore not assess the penalty. The official answer we got from CMS was "We don't have the ability to monitor that."

From what I have read, it appears that we must submit 25 of the ERx G codes during 2012 to avoid the penalty (same as 2011).

I was thinking for some reason we had to submit 30x G8553 codes for the calendar year. you are probably correct with 25. My plan is to submit about 50 G codes then stop reporting the G code on our billing forms. Rationale is these have to be straight medicare B patients. We have a large number of different Medicare Advantage carriers locally and I don't want to get to the end of the year and realize "oops I don't have enough Medicare B G8553 codes reported."