About Us

Dr. Timothy Brundage is our chief executive officer and medical director. 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. 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. Jose Pestana is a physician advisor, managing level of care reviews, clinical documentation education, utilization reviews and insurance denials appeals.

Dr. Pestana is board certified in internal medicine, a fellow of the American College of Osteopathic Internists and a Certified Clinical Documentation Specialist (CCDS). He has worked as a physician advisor for Morton Plant Hospital/BayCare and Executive Health Resources where he reviewed cases for level of care and Medicare compliance.

Dr. Pestana has worked as a hospitalist at Spartanburg Regional Health System in Spartanburg, SC; EmCare/Northside Hospital in St. Petersburg, FL; Cogent Health Care and IPC Hospitalist Company in Tampa, FL; and at Bay Pines VA in Bay Pines, FL. Prior to that, he owned a primary care physician practice, Pestana Primary Care, in Palm Harbor, FL, and worked as a primary care physician at Erie VA in Erie, PA, where he served as the Chair of the Peer Review Committee and as acting medical director for primary care.

Dr. Pestana earned a Doctor of Osteopathic Medicine from New York College of Osteopathic Medicine in Old Westbury, NY. He completed his residency and internship in internal medicine at St. Barnabas Hospital in Bronx, NY.

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.

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.

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.