Kelly McLendon, RHIA

Kelly McLendon, RHIA has had a varied and unique career specializing in cutting edge, high performance work experiences. He put himself through the University of Florida and Florida Tech University (now known as the University of Central Florida) as a Captain of Beach Lifeguards at Canaveral National Seashore after a stint with the Volusia County Beach Patrol (one of the top rated Beach patrol’s in the world). After graduation in 1978 he served 2 years as Assistant Director of Medical Records under Ann Youngblood at Tallahassee Memorial Hospital a 800+ bed facility that served as a foundation for all aspects of Medical Record practice. He then moved into Director of Medical Records at Jess Parrish Memorial Hospital in his hometown of Titusville, Florida. His experience at JPMC rounded out his management and medical Record experiences.

He then took a position as Director of Marketing and Sales for Hospital Cooperative Association (HCA) a Vendor that microfilmed hospital medical records. They had 13 clients and one production site in Central Florida. Kelly not only added many clients to their Central Florida site, but he sold and expanded into offices in Houston, New Orleans, Miami and Atlanta, wherever he went to sell the market evolved and the company prospered. At the end of HCA’s run they had 5 production locations and over 300 sites, all sold by Kelly.

In 1984 Optical Disk WORM technology and document imaging arrived and Kelly recognized it as a way to differentiate himself with knowledge so he began to study computer technology in general and WORM technology in specific. By 1989 he began to consult in this area even though the first generation of electronic document management (EDM) Vendors specializing in Medical Records were just launching. In February 1990 Kelly began to speak and write on the subject of EDM for Medical Records. Kelly also started his service career by serving as Program Chair for the Space Coast Health Information Management Association.

In February 1990 Kelly published his first article, and the American Medical Record Association’s (AMRA) first article on EDM, he was awarded the cover story. He regularly toured and spoke to groups about ‘Non traditional Roles for Medical Record Professionals’ as he was one of the first to break out into a non-traditional (non-Medical Record departmental) role.

He continued to sell and consult until 1994 when he was the first employee hired by MedPlus to build a EDM application for Health Information Management (HIM, note the name had changed from Medical Records to Health Information Management). Kelly and MedPlus assembled a crack technical team and built the first EDM platform that actually took HIM departments (and Patient Accounts and Registration) paperless. This application ‘ChartMaxx’ remains #1 KLAS ranked today. Kelly also was responsible for creation of the first implementation methodology logically configuring deficiency analysis, coding workflow, scan capture and interface capture and reconciliation. No company had ever figured this sequencing out before Kelly and MedPlus. Nowadays all utilize this sequencing.

Kelly wanted to grow, after 5 years MedPlus he moved to Eclipsys where he first sold a $20,000,000 IS Outsourcing deal making his quota in his first 3 months. He was then brought in to help Product Management the Eclipsys EDMN applications and to leverage his HIM expertise across all Eclipsys clinical products. This gave him large Vendor marketing and sales expertise and grounded him in all EHR and Clinical (as well as finaical) applications.

After 5 years at Eclipsys he took the bold step of starting his own consulting company and he founded Information Evolution Management. With his large network from all the speaking, writing and client sites he had performed over the years it seemed natural to create an entity that provided state-of-the-art HIM and EDM as well as EHR strategic consulting which the industry sorely needed.

Kelly has kept up with the industry by constantly volunteering to speak, write and serve on FHIMA and National AHIMA position, he also served in the Computer Based patient Record Institute. He has published literally dozens of articles and performed even more speaking engagements to which his CV attests. In 2003 he was awarded the AHIMAQ Visionary Award for which he is well suited.

In 2007 he decided to expand his consulting company to include others resources and formed Health Information Xperts (HIX), a well funded entity capable of growing with the market which badly needs HIM, EDM, EHR and EMR type consulting from strategies through implementation and finally into the new world of operational efficiency management.

Through out his career Kelly has been leading edge, that continues with his work in RHIO’s and Health Information Exchanges as well as Personal Health Records. His work has taken him to foreign countries and he excels at all he engages in, we look forward to this continuing well into this century.

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