"Health & Medical News"

Washington — Doctors who want to go paperless when ordering drugs for their Medicare patients now have a set of federal standards on how to do it. Those who are prescribing electronically already have a year in which to become compliant with the rules.

The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services on April 2 released final e-prescribing regulations for Medicare Part D. Under the rules, physicians and pharmacies will not be required to use electronic prescriptions but must follow the new standards if they do.

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Many of the country’s largest health plans have agreed on a set of standards to be used nationwide as the basis for physician pay-for-performance initiatives and tiered networks. Underlying the effort is insurers’ fears that states could develop 50 different sets of regulations to govern these programs — a concern sparked by last year’s crackdown by New York’s attorney general.

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Washington — A House committee approved legislation that would make the National Institute of Standards and Technology responsible for setting federal health information technology standards and would make the institute available as a consulting body for private industry efforts.

The purpose is to speed up adoption of HIT, said Rep. Bart Gordon (D, Tenn.), who sponsored the measure.

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