Interview with Bruce Hrenyo, President, Tangible Solutions, Inc. VAR for e-MDs

Our interview is presented as both a YouTube presentation and an outsourced transcription of our discussion. To listen to our interview please click the Play button on the YouTube movie displayed below. 

Robert Gleeman:  This is Robert Gleeman with emrupdate. We're talking today with Bruce Hrenyo. Bruce Hrenyo is the President of Tangible Solutions. Tangible is a VAR, a value‑added reseller, for e‑MDs.

Bruce, when did you start selling e‑MDs?

Bruce Hrenyo:  We started with e‑MDs in 1998 or so. We were actually e‑MDs' first VAR. We went out on a hunt for products to represent and capabilities that were interesting to us. We did a fairly extensive list and cross‑analysis with a number of the products that were available at that time. We came across e‑MDs and started using their product and reselling their product.

Robert:  Why did you pick them?

Bruce:  We wanted to work with a young, vibrant company, and at that point it was actually version 1.04 of their product. We were also starting, and we believed in a technology called ASP, and we created a technology called "Happe: Hosted Application Environment" We wanted to work with a company that would allow us to have a diversity of delivery mechanisms for practices. So, they make available the traditional LAN‑based installation as well as, through Happe, we have an ASP solution. (continued after the YouTube movie)

We look at a VAR as a third part of the cycles. When you deal with a vendor, you have an opportunity to look at other products that maybe a software vendor does not provide. And again, we look at it as a solution when we present an EMR product to a practice.

We start with:  are they satisfied and interested in e‑MDs as a solution series? And then from there we actually start to tailor into a more diverse solution to solve their problems, whether that is a LAN‑based installation or a hosted‑based application. As well as we bolt on other technology: we do automated check‑in kiosk systems, electronic claims, electronic eligibility, that kind of stuff.

Robert:  We have come to know that EMR is a very service‑intensive operation. Do you have a lot of service people that go out there in the field with the customers?

Bruce:  Absolutely, and the way we actually deploy our trainers, our trainers are actually in the field. So we use a lot of the same technology that we would put into doctor's offices: VoIP, Voiceover IP phone systems, as well as other types of technologies, remote access, remote control and so on.

We actually place our trainers out in the field. Though we are based in Charlotte, NC, we have trainers up towards the Virginia border line, we have trainers in Ashville, we have one down in Columbia, South Carolina. Our accountant is based out of Greensboro, North Carolina.

Robert:  Why do the e‑MDs customers seem to be so happy?

Bruce:  I think e‑MDs itself has a very good product, a very solid product. With e‑MDs embracing VARs out in the field, we're able to be closer to the individual problem so if a problem does arise we can actually get in our car and drive and visit the customer. We also have local training centers. That just gives us an opportunity to work more closely with the individual providers, help them develop templates, help them develop business workflows.

We believe it's more than just, "Here's a product and work with it." You have to try to embrace that product, you need to try to extend the features of that product into your practice and that's where we feel VARs step up to the plate differently than directly software sellers.

E‑MDs is a great company, {I've been) with them a long time. In our case, they're based out of Austin, Texas. They may or may not know the nuances of Charlotte, North Carolina, or a rural community here in the Carolinas where we would know those rules and nuances, how to work through issues, local technical issues.

Robert:  e‑MDs supplies a lot of medical content in the form of 800 different templates. Do you also have access to those templates?

Bruce:  Absolutely, e‑MDs ships the majority of those templates with the product. They also have newsgroups in which they have some of those templates, provided on those news forums, as well as we actually have a couple of providers that we work with that will help some of our other provider customers develop templates for them. We do have a tremendous amount of flexibility to make the product work with each of the providers within a practice and then create an environment that allows them to follow through with that workflow.

Robert:  Speak directly, heart‑to‑heart, to those 6,000 doctors out there and tell them why they should call you.

Bruce:  We find providing technology, providing solutions to practices, an important help for them and that's what we're here to do. We're here to help them go through technology. Very often I do the same thing for my provider, I go to my internal medicine doctors and let them help me understand medicine. We do the same thing on technology, we're here to provide a solution.

I have a quick story of ‑‑ sometimes the solution doesn't need to be fancy. We had a practice that, when we brought them on to an EMR, had some difficulty routing the patients through the practice. We didn't invent some super‑technology carrier or any of that type of stuff. What we wound up doing was we made a little grease eraser board. We laminated some sheets so the provider circled the provider's name, "follow up in two weeks," and handed that to the patient.

Sometimes as simple as a piece of paper helped route those patients through the practice. So solutions don't need to be technology, they don't need to be expensive, they don't need to be fancy. Sometimes they're as simple as a piece of paper.

So that's what we position ourselves to do, is providing solutions for practices and helping them navigate and manage and take a lot of the technology pizzazz out of it and try and help them understand it.

The overwhelming majority of technology that we offer to practices, the solution we offer to practices, is technology that comes from providers. They'd ask us to look into a set of technology and so we use that opportunity to research it, see how it would fit, make sure it works, understand it and then we move that forward with other practices.

Robert:  We were talking today to Bruce Hrenyo from Tangible Solutions. Bruce, thank you very much for being with us today.

Bruce:  Thank you! I appreciate this opportunity.