CINCINNATI Once-bankrupt PocketScript sells for $1.5M

The computers are designed to help doctors write prescriptions.
CINCINNATI (AP) -- A 4-year-old company with plans to transform the way doctors prescribe medications has been sold, a year after its executives rejected a much larger offer while fighting bankruptcy.
Zix Corp. of Dallas paid $1.5 million for PocketScript Inc. last week, a day before a large health care provider said it would buy several thousand of PocketScript's hand-held computers to give to its doctors.
PocketScript makes computers that allow doctors to see the approved brands of drugs on patients' insurance policies. They can transmit prescriptions that pharmacists can easily read, reducing the possibility of incorrect prescriptions.
The devices sell for between $300 and $500 and run on wireless Blackberry and Pocket PC operating systems.
Zix, which develops computer software to improve security of e-mail and other online communication systems, said doctors are increasingly looking for new technology to handle the growing number of prescriptions.
"The demand for e-prescribing is being driven by the health care industry's need to increase patient safety, reduce costs and save time," said John Ryan, Zix's chief executive, president and chairman.
The day after the deal, Tufts Health Plan said it would provide 5,000 doctors with the PocketScript device for free. It also plans to offer its other 13,000 doctors the devices at a discount, said Catherine Grant, a spokeswoman for the Waltham, Mass.-based company.
Why now?
Dan Gibbons, PocketScript's vice president at its headquarters in nearby Mason, said he could not discuss why the company agreed to the deal after it rejected a $13.5 million buyout last year from another suitor.
PocketScript was debt-laden at that time and filed for bankruptcy a month after the offer in February 2002. Steve Burns and Dr. Ted Bort, who founded the company in 1999, reorganized PocketScript to emerge from bankruptcy a month later.
Gibbons would not say if cash problems prompted the sale to Zix, which said it did not purchase any of PocketScript's debt. PocketScript's employees will retain their jobs.
Some doctors said Zix will have made a good buy if it can improve the PocketScript technology.
"It takes a physician about three minutes to enter a new patient into such devices," cardiologist Jim Rohack said. "That sort of interferes with patient flow. Until it gets the bugs worked out, it won't really take off."
Rohack piloted a rival e-prescriptions program and decided not to roll it out to his clinic of 500 doctors in Temple, Texas, until the technology sped up.
Tufts' pilot program of PocketScript's technology in 2001 concluded differently. It said that the devices significantly improved patient safety and communication with pharmacists.