Incentives push more doctors to e-prescribe

Wall Street Journal (subscription required), January 21, 2009

Due to new incentives, doctors are finally beginning to favor of electronic prescriptions. Medicare this month began paying doctors a bonus if they switch their patients over to e-prescribing, and some private health plans also have begun offering extra payments along with free equipment. A coalition of technology companies is is also giving doctors free software to encourage them to ditch paper prescription pads. As a result, the number of physicians prescribing medicines electronically has more than doubled in the past year to about 70,000, or about 12% of all office-based doctors.