HHS Secretary Mike Leavitt has announced final regulations that will support physician adoption of electronic prescribing and electronic health records technology.

"Electronic health records help doctors provide higher quality patient care, improved efficiency and with less hassle," Secretary Leavitt said. "By removing barriers, these regulation changes will help physicians get these systems in place and working for patients faster."

Electronic prescribing enables a physician to transmit a prescription electronically to the patient's choice of pharmacy or ancillary provider. It can improve patient safety by decreasing prescription errors due to hard-to-read physician handwriting and communication errors, automating the process of checking for drug interactions and allergies and eliminating duplicative laboratory and diagnostic tests.


Electronic prescribing also enables physicians and pharmacies to obtain from drug plans information about the patient's eligibility and medication history. Having access to this information at the point of care makes writing, transmitting, and filling prescriptions quicker and easier, and also makes it possible for physicians to make informed decisions about the availability of lower-cost, therapeutically appropriate alternatives to the prescribed medication.

Electronic health records technology, when interoperable among health care providers in various settings, offers benefits similar to the benefits of electronic prescribing in terms of reducing medical errors, coordinating care and improving efficiency.

Interoperable electronic health records will allow information to be more portable, moving with consumers from one point of care to another. In addition, the implementation of interoperable electronic health records technology is a critical step in achieving secure and seamless information exchange and improving our health care system.

The final rules displayed today by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) and the Office of the Inspector General (OIG) create new exceptions and safe harbors to two key federal fraud and abuse laws for arrangements involving the donation of certain electronic health information technology and services.

The CMS rule creates two new exceptions to the physician self-referral law, which prohibits a physician from referring Medicare patients for certain designated health services (DHS) to entities with which the physician has a financial relationship, unless an exception applies. The law also prohibits the health care entity from billing for Medicare services that are furnished as a result of a prohibited referral.

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