E9-31216 I B 4 b

b. Electronic Prescribing Standards

The Medicare Prescription Drug, Improvement and Modernization Act of 2003 (MMA) provided for, among other things, the Voluntary Prescription Drug Benefit Program.

Under that program, electronically transmitted prescriptions and certain other information for covered Part D drugs prescribed for Part D eligible individuals must be sent in a manner that complies with applicable standards that are adopted by the Secretary.

The Secretary proposed the first of these standards in a February 2005 rulemaking (70 FR 6256).

Subsequently, on June 23, 2006 (71 FR 36020), HHS published an interim final rule that maintained the National Council for Prescription Drug Programs (NCPDP) SCRIPT 5.0 as the adopted standard, but allowed for the voluntary use of a subsequent backward compatible version of the standard, NCPDP SCRIPT 8.1.

As a result of pilot testing of six ``initial standards'' that had been identified in 2005, the Secretary issued a notice of proposed rulemaking on November 16, 2007 (72 FR 64900) which proposed adoption of certain standards.

The Secretary also used this proposed rule to solicit comments regarding the impact of adopting NCPDP SCRIPT 8.1 and retiring NCPDP SCRIPT 5.0.

Based on the comments that were received, the Secretary issued a final rule (73 FR 18918) on April 7, 2008 that adopted NCPDP SCRIPT Version 8.1 and retired NCPDP SCRIPT Version 5.0.

In adopting an initial set of standards to meet the requirement specified at section 3004(b)(1) of the PHSA, we have taken into account these electronic prescribing standards and ensured that our standards are consistent with them.