MN lawmakers OK sweeping healthcare bill

From Modern Healthcare (free subscription required):

Minnesota’s Legislature approved a sweeping healthcare bill that would require electronic prescribing, create new rules to boost quality and price transparency and tie payment to care coordination and performance.

Pharmacists, physicians and others who prescribe or dispense medication in Minnesota would have to do so electronically as of 2011 under the bill passed in the Legislature’s final hours.

Under the bill, Minnesota’s health commissioner must create a set of quality measures for public reporting and incentive payments. Starting in July 2010, the state must annually publish providers’ performance and begin pay-for-performance for Minnesota employees. By September of that year, Minnesota would also publish cost and quality comparisons of similar providers.