| MoneyMade@Netscape.Net
I briefly recall hearing some talk of Parkstone Medical in early 2000...around the time Allscripts (Symbol:MDRX) went public and spiked to $60 on the excitement of their handheld device that would literally change the way Doctors now write prescriptions. No more paper, no more illegible orders and of course reduce the chance for Dosage errors!
As i dug deeper i found that this little handheld device could do alot more (Review labs,Radiology reports,Dopplers,Treadmill test, patient Hx) But the major benefit to the physician was the electronic prescription... no more callbacks. The Physician can tell right away drug interactions and drug formularies (Formularies...meaning if your insurance covers the prescribed medication under your present health care plan or not) is an intergrated function on the Parkstone handheld. Name one physician that can quote drug interactions off the top of their head, given the various new drugs coming to market daily....without having to seek a PDR.
Further probing showed three other startups in this sector (Iscribe,Parkstone medical and a third i forget???)....Of the Four Parkstone IMO showed the most promise with major Backers ie. Cardinal, and Oak Ventures. To Take a look at the device Goto(http://www.parkstone.com/v2001/htm/pages/index.asp)
I believe when this company goes public we could be onto something big. Did you know in three years the council for patient safety wants to eliminate the need for all handwritten prescriptions. (See below a case study)
Physician Case Study
ParkStone Technology Cures the Ills of Off-Formulary Prescribing for Family Practitioner Robert Green, D.O.
Like most physicians today, Robert Green, D.O., accepts more than a dozen managed care plans at his practice in Fort Lauderdale, FL and like his colleagues, he has experienced tremendous difficulty keeping up with each plan’s ever-changing formulary guidelines.
"I am a strongly managed care-oriented physician who belongs to a lot of plans, and each plan has its own formularies," Dr. Green explained. "I have 10 to 15 formulary books sitting on my desk that I have to refer to, and they become obsolete quickly."
The use of these "obsolete" formulary reference books typically resulted in off-formulary prescribing that required Dr. Green to substitute medications for up to 10 pharmacy calls each day. This process wasted precious time and frustrated Dr. Green, his patients, and pharmacists.
"Patients are savvy and are aware of mistakes and denials of prescriptions; they don’t have time to be inconvenienced," Dr. Green said.
Given the difficulties Dr. Green and his patients encountered in the world of managed care, he turned to technology from ParkStone Medical Information Systems. The ParkStone system is a multi-functional tool based on a palm-size PC and the Microsoft Windows CE operating system for managing and writing prescriptions, tracking diagnostic test results and generating referrals in compliance with insurance company guidelines. The system fits easily into the palm of Dr. Green’s hand or coat pocket, allowing easy access to information at the point of care.
"I am not a computer savvy guy, and I generated a prescription within five minutes of using the device," Dr. Green said. "The next day, I used it all day and I haven’t gone a day without it since then."
Dr. Green says using the palm-size system "is easier than writing on a prescription pad," and that’s what sold him on using the device.
"It’s quicker and easier to touch four boxes than to write out a prescription, and there are no legibility problems," Dr. Green said. "When it comes to refills, this device is a Godsend. A patient with multi-system diseases may need 10 or 12 different medicines, and the ParkStone device makes it easy to generate refills--you just tap the keypad, and it’s done."
Having point-of-care access to formulary and other insurance information that is updated daily has been invaluable to Dr. Green’s practice. Since he began using ParkStone technology in July 1999, Dr. Green has eliminated pharmacy call backs from his daily routine, which amounts to significant time savings and increased patient satisfaction and safety.
"With ParkStone’s technology, I can avoid the call backs and patient frustration," Dr. Green said. "In the past, when my patients had to wait for an on-formulary substitute from the pharmacy, some of them wouldn’t pick up the new prescription, and their conditions would end up getting worse. Now I don’t have to worry about situation like that."
Knowing patients will receive their medications promptly and safely is perhaps the best benefit of using ParkStone technology, as the system has built-in safety features, such as drug/allergy warnings and appropriate dosage information programmed into the system.
"I don’t have to wonder at night if I wrote the appropriate dosage or if a patient might be allergic to a particular drug; now I know this information immediately during the prescribing process."
Pharmacists appreciate Dr. Green’s prescriptions as well. The ParkStone system generates a prescription that can be printed using a computer printer or transmitted electronically to the pharmacy of the patient’s choice. The prescription is legible, accurate and on formulary, ensuring pharmacists can fill the prescription immediately and safely.
"When I began using this technology, every pharmacist in the area began calling to ask what I was using," Dr. Green recalled. "The device helps to ensure safer dispensing of medications and improves efficiency as well. Some pharmacy benefit managers I’ve worked with make up to four million call backs each year for illegible and off-formulary prescriptions, at an average cost of $20 each. That’s a total of $80 million wasted each year on this administrative task. ParkStone’s technology can help save that money."
While ParkStone technology helps keep Dr. Green’s prescriptions on formulary by default, it is occasionally necessary to prescribe a specific medication for a patient that may not be covered by a particular insurance plan, and in those cases, the system makes the prescription writing process just as easy for the physician.
"The system lets me override the formulary if I believe it’s important, and that’s a huge benefit," Dr. Green said. "Sometimes a patient needs a medicine that I know I have to go off formulary to prescribe, but I can appeal to the plan to have that medication covered."
Another benefit of the ParkStone system that Dr. Green relies on is mobile access to his patient information. "If I’m at home and I get a call from a patient who needs medicine or an elderly patient who needs a blood pressure medication refill, I can just pull out the device for all of the information necessary to meet the patient needs when I’m away from the office."
Patients are also impressed with Dr. Green’s "high tech" office. As a matter of fact, new patients often tell Dr. Green they have heard about his technology tools. Dr. Green believes his use of the ParkStone system draws new patients to his practice, and he is proud to be a better physician because of this technology. For example, when the FDA recently issued an advisory on Propulsid and the need to closely assess risk for patients who are taking the drug, Dr. Green quickly generated a list of patients taking the medication using the ParkStone system. Within minutes, he was able to act on the advisory with his patient list in hand, a task that would have taken hours without the ParkStone technology.
"With the list in hand, we were able to quickly pull charts and ask patients to come into the office for follow up or call their gastroenterologist for further advice," Dr. Green said. "Then we easily determined which patients needed to have an EKG, which was recommended for people using that drug. The ParkStone system allowed us to respond to the advisory immediately. No other system could have done that for us."
Soon to be released modules of the ParkStone system will provide general treatment protocols, drug-to-drug interaction information and hospital charge documentation capabilities, and the company hopes to integrate additional disease management functionality into the system in the near future.
"Amazingly, with all of its capabilities, this tool is in the infant stage of development," Dr. Green said. "This technology has the potential to encompass everything a physician needs. Healthcare is hindered by archaic, paper-based methods, and ParkStone is the cure to many of the ills in healthcare." |
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