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CMS-1403-FC
4 minutes per call, labor, and telecommunication costs, at
more than $78 million per year, for a total cost for faxes
and phone calls of $88.8 million per year. 9
Another national drug store chain offered a similar
analysis. They estimated that a prescription refill
request undertaken by telephone takes 1.43 minutes longer
to complete than one initiated by computer-generated
facsimile. Without further modification of the
computer-generated facsimile exception, as of
January 1, 2009 this national drug store chain would have
to replace the more than 123 million computer-generated
facsimile refill requests that are made each year with
phone calls or paper faxes. They estimate that this would
result in 9.2 lost hours of staff time per store per week,
resulting in $88 million in additional costs, based on a
blended payroll rate of pharmacists and staff.
Extrapolating this cost across the entire pharmacy industry
based on this commenter's market share, they estimated an
impending pharmacy industry loss of at least $520 million
unless the computer-generated facsimile exception is
further modified. 10
9 CVS/Caremark Discussion Points on E-Fax Ruling Exceptions, January 3, 2007.
10 December 22, 2007 correspondence from Walgreen’s to CMS re: CMS-1385-FC, Final Rule with
Comment Period: Amendment of the E-Prescribing Exemption for Computer-Generated Facsimile
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