Medicare Program; Standards for E-Prescribing Under Medicare Part D and Identification of Backward Compatible Version of Adopted Standard for E-Prescribing and the Medicare Prescription Drug Program (Version 8.1)

This final rule adopts uniform standards for medication history, formulary and benefits, and fill status notification (RxFill) for the Medicare Part D electronic prescribing (e-prescribing) drug program as required by section 1860D-4(e)(4)(D) of the Social Security Act (the Act). In addition, we are adopting the National Provider Identifier (NPI) as a standard for identifying health care providers in e-prescribing transactions. It also finalizes the June 23, 2006 interim final rule with comment period that identified the National Council for Prescription Drug Programs (NCPDP) Prescriber/Pharmacist Interface SCRIPT standard, Implementation Guide, Version 8.1 ("NCPDP SCRIPT 8.1") as a backward compatible update of the NCPDP SCRIPT 5.0 ("NCPDP SCRIPT 5.0"), until April 1, 2009. This final rule also retires NCPDP SCRIPT 5.0 and adopts the newer version, NCPDP SCRIPT 8.1, as the adopted standard. Finally, except as otherwise set forth herein, we are implementing our compliance date of 1 year after the publication of these final uniform standards. This is the second set in a continuing process of issuing e-prescribing final standards for the Medicare Part D program,