Customer Interview- Cheryl Tuggle

By partnering with The IT Company, things have been kept running, are fixed in a timely manner, and done so in a way that makes every problem, big or small, feel important.  

Back in 2011, Office manager Cheryl Tuggle and her company Rheumatology Consultants (RHC) began reformatting the way their company functioned. RHC is a medical practice specializing in Arthritis, Lupus, connective tissue diseases, and inflammatory diseases. In 2011, the company decided to switch to using electronic health records. With this switch, everything was going to be done electronically and there was no way a “non IT person” could take care of it alone in-house, which lead Cheryl to hiring The IT Company to be their IT department. With these new advancements in the way they were running their company, Cheryl stated that if their “IT goes down, we go down.”  

What is the role that IT plays at RHC, and why is it so important? 

“Well since moving to electronic health records, it is pretty much the number one thing that is done, because everything goes through there. Now with us going from the servers based in the office to the cloud, The IT Company pretty much takes care of everything. Whether it is our practice management, our EHR, and even the accounting software is now through the cloud. So pretty much if that goes down, we go down.” 

If your IT is not functioning, can you see patients? 

Well we could see them from the standpoint that most of our physicians know our patients well enough that they could get through a visit, (taking notes and then recording it later). But it does make it very challenging. 

Cheryl has been able to rely on The IT Company to ensure that their IT is running, allowing their company to be running. She told us that after partnering with The IT Company, things run much faster. Because The IT Company is local, if something isn’t able to be fixed remotely, the employees are able to come to the office. And most everything is taken care of within a few hours, or at least that day. While Cheryl says the fact that The IT Company is able to keep things running is vital to her, and what is even more important is the way in which The IT Company employees treat her while making it run.  

How do The IT Company employees make you feel? 

Oh they’re great. All of them are great. Even the people you haven’t met, you can email them or talk to them on the phone and you feel like you’re important. Whether it’s just a password reset or something big, they make you feel like everything is important. Because to us at the time, it is important. And even though in the big scheme of things, we’re not down and we’re still functioning, they never make you feel like your issue is dumb or unimportant.  

So if you had to describe The IT Company to someone who had never heard of them, how would you? 

Whenever I talk to other people, they always seem to have a problem with their IT company. And I am always thinking to myself, “you know ours has been great”. We simply call, they take care of it, everything is timely, everything is professional, everyone is friendly. To me that is the best thing. I never feel like I am putting anyone out by calling, or I don’t feel like my things are not important, as they're being taken care of extremely quickly. So that’s what stands out to me. 

Everyone wants to be able to rely on their IT to run properly. By choosing us as their IT department years ago, we are able to be consistent, timely, and reliable for RHC.