But most likely you still won’t be, even though the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) last week released a proposal that would add new hardship exemptions to the program. The proposal would exempt some practitioners from the 2012 Medicare penalty that will be levied against those who are not e-prescribing by June 30. The proposal would create new categories for hardship exemptions, making the total list of exemptions as follows:

• Individual practices in rural areas without high speed internet access
• Individual practices in areas without sufficient available pharmacies for electronic prescribing
• Practitioners who have registered to participate in the Medicare or Medicaid EHR Incentive Program and have adopted certified EHR technology
• Practitioners who are unable to electronically prescribe due to local, state, or federal law or regulation. (This proposed exemption is designed to address practitioners who prescribe controlled substances.)
• Practitioners who infrequently prescribe. (For 2012, this means a practitioner must not have had the opportunity to e-prescribe at least 10 times between January and the end of June 2011 in order to qualify for the exemption.)
• Practitioners who have had insufficient opportunities to report the e-prescribing measure due to program limitations

Under the proposal, practitioners would have until Oct. 1 to claim a hardship exemption. This new proposal comes after months of pressure from the ACC, AMA and other physician organizations. The College will be commenting on the proposal, particularly on the provisions of the e-prescribing program the new proposal does not address, such as the June 30 deadline and the narrowness of the proposed infrequent prescriber exemption.

In sum, while this is good news for some providers who qualify under the new hardship exemptions, most are still going to need to demonstrate that they are e-prescribing by June 30 to miss getting a 1% penalty in their Medicare payments.

More detailed information is posted at CardioSource.org/healthIT.