About Us

Dr. Timothy Brundage is our chief executive officer and a physician advisor. He earned his CCDS certification through the Association of Clinical Documentation Improvement Specialists (ACDIS) and is a past ACDIS board member. He is a diplomate of the American Board of Internal Medicine and is the co-chair of the CDI committee for the American College of Physician Advisors (ACPA).

Dr. Brundage travels the country educating physicians, with a focus on breaking down departmental silos by unifying clinical documentation across quality, utilization, denials and CDI. He is also passionate about increasing the value of the physician advisor role within hospital organizations.

Dr. Brundage is a frequent presenter at the ACDIS annual conference and has spoken nationally for AHIMA at its annual meeting and its CDI Summit. He is a selected speaker for ACMA state meetings and the national ACMA Leadership and Physician Advisor Conference. He is also a presenter at the RAC Summit National Physician Advisor and Utilization Review Boot Camp.

Dr. Brundage was selected by Tampa Bay Business Journal as a Health Care Heroes award winner in the health care educator category.

“Dr. Brundage continues to be an innovator in the field of CDI. His clinical documentation tip cards proved to be an extremely valuable tool in our CDI physician education program.”

– Director of Case Management, 690-bed Level II Trauma Facility and Children’s Hospital

Dr. Brett Hoggard is our chief medical officer and director of quality. He is director of a hospitalist group at Northside Hospital in St. Petersburg Florida. Dr. Hoggard is a diplomate of the American Board of Internal Medicine and is a practicing hospitalist. In addition to clinical medicine, he has spearheaded multiple process improvement projects to optimize quality metrics, physician documentation, EMR implementation and clinical care.

Dr. Hoggard graduated from Emory Medical School and also completed his internal medicine residency at Emory. He is currently a core teaching faculty member and is in charge of the academic curriculum for the internal medicine residency at Northside Hospital. Dr. Hoggard has been recognized with multiple awards throughout his career including the Teaching Attending of the Year, nursing nominated Physician of the Year and the HCA Fritz Humanitarian Award.

Dr. Hoggard is an expert in physician documentation and coauthored the ACDIS course “Clinical Documentation Essentials for the Hospital Provider”. His most recent area of focus is physician documentation and its impact on pay for performance metrics.

Dr. La Charité currently serves as medical director for clinical documentation integrity, coding and recovery auditor response at the University of Tennessee Medical Center. Dr. La Charité previously served as Medical Director for clinical integration for both the University of Tennessee Medical Center and for the University Physician’s Association, a 750-member independent provider association.

Dr. La Charité is a Clinical Assistant Professor in the Department of Internal Medicine where he currently serves as a teaching attending and as the curriculum director for the Internal Medicine Residency Program’s hospitalist rotation. Dr. La Charité is board certified in internal medicine and has been a practicing hospitalist since completing his residency in 2002. Dr. La Charité also holds responsibilities in case management, utilization review, medical records, compliance and performance improvement.

Dr. La Charité is an active member of the American Association for Physician Leadership; American College of Physicians; American College of Physician Advisors; American Health Information Management Association; National Association of Physician Advisors; Society of Hospital Medicine; and the Association of Clinical Documentation Improvement Specialists where he served as a member of the National Advisory Board (2011-2013).

As a Certified Clinical Documentation Specialist (CCDS) and a Certified Coder (CCS), Dr. La Charité is a national speaker on numerous CDI topics and has authored three books, including “The Physician Advisor’s Guide to Clinical Documentation Improvement”, “CDI Companion for Physician Advisors: Notes from the Field” and “The CDI Filed Guide to Denial Prevention and Audit Defense”.

Dr. Scott Kushin is a physician advisor. He is a Diplomat of the American Board of Internal Medicine and a practicing academic hospitalist, supervising Lake Erie College of Medicine internal medicine residents at Northside Hospital in St. Petersburg, Fla. as well as family medicine residents at St. Petersburg General Hospital.

Dr. Hiten D. Patel is a physician advisor, specializing in status assignment and medical necessity documentation education. Dr. Patel is board certified by the American Osteopathic Board of Internal Medicine and is a practicing hospitalist at St. Joseph’s Hospital North in Lutz, Florida.

Dr. Patel is an active member of the American College of Physician Advisors, Society of Hospital Medicine, American Osteopathic Association, Florida Osteopathic Medical Association and American College of Osteopathic Internists.

Dr. Christopher Halleman is a physician advisor. He is board certified by the American Osteopathic Board of Internal Medicine. Dr. Halleman is a practicing hospitalist at Largo Medical Center in Largo, Fla., where he serves as Associate Medical Director of Hospital Medicine. He is an active member of the American Osteopathic Association, American College of Osteopathic Internists and American College of Physicians.

Dr. Richard Pinson is a leading expert in both the technical and clinical requirements of effective healthcare coding and compliance, and has consulted with scores of organizations to improve the effectiveness of clinical documentation integrity (CDI) programs. He is an accomplished and trusted physician educator, having conducted hundreds of physician lectures and training sessions throughout the course of his 15+ years as a physician consultant and advisor to academic medical centers, health systems and community hospitals.

Dr. Pinson is highly sought out by his peers for his knowledge and advice as a guest faculty lecturer at conferences, having been a guest lecturer in over 25 conferences in the last decade. In addition to his accomplished record as a healthcare educator and physician advisor for his clients, he, together with Cynthia Tang, RHIA, CCS, has published some of the most respected, effective coding and education guides and tools in the industry, such as the best-selling CDI Pocket Guide© (13 annual editions 2008-2020).

Cynthia Tang is our director of CDI program services. Her professional experience includes working as a healthcare consultant for a “Big Six” accounting firm, director for a national healthcare consulting firm and regional director of quality resource and health information management for two of the nation’s largest healthcare organizations.

Ms. Tang has implemented successful and sustainable coding and CDI programs in hundreds of hospitals across the country for over 25 years. Her professional experience and achievements include:

Serving on multiple hospital “turnaround” engagements to expeditiously improve service delivery, reduce costs, optimize reimbursement and ensure compliance.

Redesigning case management processes from a utilization review and discharge planning focus to a patient care coordination model, resulting in significant reductions in length-of-stay and costs.

Analyzing claims denied for medical necessity and re-engineered processes that resulted in significant recovery of lost revenue and prevented further denials.

Preparing successful appeals of inpatient DRG denials received from recovery audit contractors and commercial payers.

Ms. Tang is co-author of the best-selling, authoritative CDI Pocket Guide with Dr. Richard Pinson, as well as the Outpatient CDI Pocket Guide: Focusing on HCCs, the Pocket Guide for Coding Professionals and the CDI for the Clinician physician e-learning solution.

Ms. Tang has conducted numerous educational workshops and presentations for client hospitals and on a regional and national basis, including the 2016 and 2017 ACDIS Annual Conference two-day workshop, “Building a Best Practice CDI Team”, and the 2018 ACDIS Outpatient CDI Conference.

Keith Fulmer has more than two decades of expertise in combining the fields of health care and technology to drive positive patient outcomes. At Brundage Group, he applies his passion for developing bold and innovative strategies to streamline service delivery to our valued clients.

In Keith’s previous role as Senior Vice President of Enterprise Operations at Laser Spine Institute, he led a team of 400 employees in helping the organization to create a personalized path of clinical care that was effective, efficient and provided an exceptional patient experience.

Prior to joining Laser Spine Institute, Keith held key leadership roles at various health care and technology organizations. He served as Vice President, Healthcare Advisory and Chief Technology Officer for Hielix, Inc. and as Executive Vice President, Healthcare Solutions for Kforce, Inc.

Keith earned his Master of Health Services Administration from Strayer University and a Bachelor of Science in Business and Information Technology from the University of Phoenix. He is a certified Project Management Professional.

David Guren has over 10 years of leadership experience, and brings a high-energy, visionary approach that helps to lead the integration of our physician advisor services, analytics, and mid-revenue cycle staffing support.

David previously worked as an account executive at MedPartners, where he focused on care management and utilization management. He served as a trusted partner to health systems and assisted in identifying the correct resources to streamline throughput, lower length of stay, and improve compliant level of care.

Prior to joining MedPartners, David was an area director of operations for Covelli Enterprises. He was directly responsible for all aspects of operations, including leading six separate management teams and overseeing 300 employees.

David holds a bachelor’s degree in international relations from University of South Florida, and lives in Tierra Verde with his wife, Brittany.

Taylor Smith is our vice president of business development. Prior to joining us, Taylor worked as director of client services in health information management for GHR RevCycle. He was responsible for cultivating partnerships with leading health-care organizations and actively engaging and strategizing with clients to assess ongoing needs, process improvements and growth opportunities to ensure clients remained productive and compliant.

Taylor has also served as head of sales and purchasing for Pan Atlantic Technology where he had direct oversight of Cisco sales and inventory management. In this role, he worked closely with sales, operations and management to create and implement innovative ways to strategically grow the organization and establish customer loyalty.

Taylor earned a Bachelor of Science in political science and criminology from Florida State University.

Tracy Ewin is our vice president of accounting and finance. Tracy is a healthcare executive with more than 15 years of leadership experience in hospital finance. He most recently worked as controller and director of finance at Largo Medical Center, and
prior to that was assistant chief financial officer at Bayfront Health St. Petersburg.
Tracy earned both a Bachelor of Science in accounting and in business administration from the University of South Florida.

Dustin Hicks is vice president of client engagement at Brundage Group. He is an accomplished business leader with extensive executive experience in operations, strategy and technology domains. At Brundage Group, Dustin is responsible for managing daily operations and strategic processes that enable customer success.

Prior to Brundage Group, Dustin served as chief of staff for Kforce, Inc. during a ten-year transformation campaign to retool all operations and infrastructure and served as chief operating officer for its $100 million professional solutions division. At Kforce, he designed, implemented and managed operating process infrastructure, as well as the company’s Project Management Office (PMO). He has led several dozen enterprise transformation initiatives in services and healthcare sectors and throughout his career has made transformative changes in operations, mission-critical business units and infrastructure to align with strategic revenue growth.

Dustin earned a Master Business Administration from University of Florida in Gainesville, Fla. and a bachelor’s in psychology from West Virginia University in Morgantown, W.Va.

Mary Beth Bumbarger is a Registered Health Information Administrator, Certified Coding Specialist and Certified Health Data Analyst who has worked in the health-care arena for over 30 years. She has extensive experience in health information management, clinical documentation, health informatics and analytics, project management, and process improvement. Mary Beth has held director and consultancy roles in both the government and private sector. At Brundage Group, she supports her team and clients in understanding value-driven health care and how clinical documentation affects the accurate portrayal of high-quality care.

Cheryl Ericson, MS, RN, CCDS, CDIP, is an industry expert in CDI with over 25 years of revenue cycle experience. She is recognized as a clinical documentation improvement (CDI) subject matter expert for her body of work, which includes many speaking engagements and publications for a variety of industry associations. She has helped establish industry guidance through contributions to white papers and practice briefs, including several American Health Information Management Association (AHIMA) practice briefs and white papers with the Association of Clinical Documentation Improvement (ACDIS) in the areas of clinical documentation improvement, denials management, quality, technology and querying.

Cheryl is an experienced revenue cycle consultant specializing in reimbursement methodologies. She served as the CDI Education Director for HCPro and Associate Director of Education for ACDIS. She is well versed in HIM technologies, with experience implementing CDI and coding tools in a variety of EMR environments. Prior to working with ACDIS, Ericson managed the CDI, core measures abstraction and utilization review departments at a large academic medical center.

Ericson is a member of the AHIMA CDI Practice Council, ACDIS CCDS Credentialing Committee and ACDIS Regulatory Committee. She is a past member of the ACDIS Advisory Board.

Angel Lathrop is our director of operations, with professional experience in front-end and mid-revenue cycle operations, including denials management, notification of admissions, concurrent denials, and MCR inpatient only list.

In her previous roles as patient access director at Parallon Largo Medical Center and as manager of the Parallon Central Insurance Verification Unit, Angel was responsible for denials management for both inpatient and outpatient services, including prior authorizations for surgical units, as well as implementing action plans for denials management for both clinical validation, DRG and medical necessity. She worked closely with case management on patient status assignment and concurrent denials, as well as with the quality department to improve quality and mortality metrics.