LinkSource Systems Names New Vice President of Finance
A Prescription for Success: Mosby™ Drug Data and LinkSource Systems
LinkSource Manager Utilizes New Biometric Technology
LinkSource Systems Takes Physicians Electronic to Benefit Patients
E-Prescribing Ready to Explode Onto Medical Scene
Get Ready World, Here Comes E-Script™ from LinkSource Systems
LinkSource Systems Names New Vice President of Finance
LinkSource Systems, Inc. has named Andrew King as the company’s vice president of finance. Mr. King will oversee all financial planning and analysis, accounting, internal auditing, tax compliance and risk management for the company.
“The tremendous level of optimism, energy and passion for e-health excellence at LinkSource Systems was a major factor behind why I am excited to be with LinkSource,” King commented. “Given LinkSource’s track record of innovation and outstanding people, the opportunities that lie ahead are limitless.”
Mr. King brings to LinkSource more than 15 years of financial, accounting and tax experience. Prior to LinkSource, King was the chief financial officer for Medical Specialists, a company with 10 primary care centers and two outpatient surgery centers. Previously, he held the position of chief financial officer at Successories, a leading source of motivational media. Earlier in his career, he worked at KPMG, a global provider of audit, risk advisory and tax services. Mr. King is a graduate of the University of Chicago Graduate School of Business.
“LinkSource Systems is delighted to welcome Mr. King, and we feel very fortunate to have secured his talents for our executive management team,” said David Fleming, chief executive officer. “We are confident that Mr. King’s wealth of experience, coupled with his financial and managerial skills, will help guide us to new levels of excellence and success.”
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A Prescription for Success: Mosby Drug Data and LinkSource Systems
Mosby Drug Consult™, one of the world’s most current, accurate and reliable drug databases, was selected by LinkSource Systems, Inc. to provide medication information that will be integrated into E-Script™, the electronic prescribing function of LinkSource Manager™ software.
The Mosby database has more than 65,000 entries and 1,750 drug monographs containing comprehensive prescribing information for FDA-approved products. Updated quarterly, the extensive database indexes drug products by brand name, indication and drug class. It also provides information on drug interactions, product identification and full-color pictures, dosage, product packaging and average wholesale price.
The powerhouse combination of Mosby and LinkSource Manager on a LinkSource medical tablet PC gives the physician a secure, take anywhere, electronic prescribing tool that is safer, faster and more reliable than anything on the market today. The physician can quickly write a prescription, check for drug interactions and review drug reference information at the point of care. Electronic prescribing is praised by its advocates as a timesaving, and error- and liability-reducing technique. Studies show that electronic prescribing reduces prescription errors by 70%.
Consumers will benefit from the team up of Mosby and LinkSource: Physicians can use the LinkSource medical tablet PC to generate customizable patient handouts, in both English and Spanish, that can help the patient achieve the best results from a medication. Mosby also provides current FDA-rated bio equivalence ratings that assist physicians in determining if a lower-cost generic can be substituted for the more expensive brand name drug.
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LinkSource Manager Utilizes New Biometric Technology
Fingerprints, long stigmatized by their association with crime scenes, may get an image boost when people start using them in every day life from paying for groceries to unlocking their personal computers. Case in point: LinkSource Manager™ software from LinkSource Systems, Inc. uses a biometric fingerprint scanner to control access to sensitive patient and clinical information.
A fingerprint scanner eliminates the need for keeping track of combinations, passwords or user
IDs. The LinkSource™ medical tablet PCs only can be accessed when an authorized user is present. The user simply places her/his finger on a special scanner (about the size of a postage stamp) whenever a password or username is required. The finger is scanned, compared to a database maintained by LinkSource Manager software and the LinkSource medical tablet PC is unlocked...all in a fraction of a second!
The biometric scanner also allows physicians to use their fingerprints to authorize prescriptions, drug refills and lab work requisitions. Fingerprints are reliable identifiers because, like snowflakes, no two fingerprints are alike, according to the FBI’s web site. Fingerprints are only partially formed by genetics. The whorls, ridges and spaces between the ridges are determined by bone growth, pressure in the womb and the environment.
Biometrics is a term used to encompass technologies used to recognize a person based upon physical or behavioral attribute. Some of the most commonly measured features are fingerprints, face and voice.
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LinkSource Systems Takes Physicians Electronic to Benefit Patients
President George Bush has set a goal of making electronic health records (EHR) available to a majority of Americans by 2014. What’s in it for patients? An improved healthcare experience tops the list. At the forefront of the transition to EHR is TotalPractice™, the medical billing and practice management solution from LinkSource Systems.
“EHR,” reports the Department of Health and Human Services, “is a digital collection of a patient’s medical history and could include items like diagnosed medical conditions, prescribed medications, vital signs, immunizations and lab results.”
EHR offers several ways to improve patient safety and satisfaction. Lost charts are eliminated, plus healthcare professionals have instant access to patient information at the point of care allowing them to answer questions quickly and efficiently. In addition, EHR offers reporting capabilities and documentation requirements to meet HIPAA requirements.
According to a January 2006 report in the Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association, many practices report huge time savings by generating referrals electronically during the patient visit. Other practices report that by implementing direct pharmacy and lab interfaces, they’ve reduced data entry errors and filing time. There is also a reduced wait time between patient visits and posted lab results, resulting in faster patient notification and increased patient satisfaction.
By using an EHR solution as offered by TotalPractice, practices have found that they need less administrative staff and can reallocate those expenditures into hiring additional nurses or other clinicians. This allows patients to have a better experience and spend more time with a service provider.
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E-Prescribing Ready
to Explode Onto Medical Scene
Electronic prescribing, also known as e-prescribing, is
coming to a physician’s office near you. Thanks to
outstanding software like LinkSource Manager™,
prescribing medications can be faster, more secure and
virtually error free. Three-quarters of U.S. pharmacies
can already accept electronic scripts, and 20% of
physicians are already prescribing electronically. Most
other pharmacies and physicians will soon jump on
board since the Medicare Modernization Act requires national standards for e-prescribing by 2009.
To e-prescribe with LinkSource Manager, the physician
would bring the LinkSource medical tablet PC into the examination
room, open the patient’s electronic medical record, select a condition or medication,
check for drug interactions, allergies or
contraindications, enter dosage and send the prescription
electronically to the pharmacy. The whole process
takes no more time than writing a conventional
prescription, but it is safer since the doctor has medical
and prescription history and a huge drug database
at his/her fingertips. The physician can even generate
drug and administration information sheets for the
patient in seconds.
E-prescribing is proven to greatly reduce errors based
on confusion among similarly named drugs, illegible
handwriting, incorrect dosage and unclear instructions.
Medication errors are estimated to cause more than
7,500 deaths each year.
More than 3.5 billion prescriptions are written every
year. Recent research indicates up to 40% of the
prescriptions need extra work for dispensing - pharmacies
make 150 million phone calls yearly to physician
offices in order to clarify problem with scripts. That’s a
lot of time on the phone that could be better spent on
patient care.
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Get Ready World, Here Comes E-Script from LinkSource Systems
It’s nothing short of amazing — that is the only way to describe E-Script™, the electronic prescribing component of TotalPractice™ from LinkSource Systems. By using a digital pen and the LinkSource medical tablet PC, a doctor can write and transmit prescriptions and refill authorizations to almost any pharmacy in only seconds. The traditional paper prescription pad will soon be a thing of the past.
E-Script takes advantage of LinkSource Manager™ software to create instant access to patient medical history, lab results, prescription history and a comprehensive drug database. The physician has all the vital information she/he need in order to quickly and safely complete a prescription. E-Script even provides treatment guidelines, potential drug interaction alerts, dosage charts and reference pictures for medications.
E-Script didn’t evolve easily. The amount of programming, thousands of lines of code, involved months of detailed work. The huge drug database (more than 65,000 drug products!) posed many challenges. But LinkSource System's Software Development Team conquered every obstacle in order to get the right information to appear in the right place, at the right time. The result: An easy-to-use prescribing environment unlike anything else on the market today.
Electronic prescribing systems, like E-Script, have the ability to change the healthcare environment. A landmark study released by the eHealth Initiative reports that electronic prescribing could reduce medical errors and possibly prevent as many as 2.1 million adverse drug events and 190,000 hospitalizations per year.
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