Employee SPOTLIGHT: Rick Brozovic – From Wordsmith to Computer Whisperer
In our third Employee Spotlight of 2022, we talked with Rick Brozovic about how he enjoys all parts of the job—including solving client issues at 3 a.m.
A 31-year health care industry veteran, Rick Brozovic is passionate about his job as Interface Director at AdvantEdge, where he’s been on staff since 2009. He oversees a staff of six, including an employee in Bangalore, India. His team is responsible for all the data that’s loaded and imported into the AdvantEdge system.
“We get file extracts and real time HL7 interfaces from hospitals in the form of demographic information, charges and reports that end up flowing into the interface database,” Rick says. The data is “very well secured and protected. It’s a big responsibility, and we take our jobs very seriously.”
Interestingly, an IT job wasn’t always in the cards for him. A native of Lombard, Illinois, a western suburb of Chicago, early on he thought he wanted to be a writer. “I dabbled in poetry and English literature, and liked authors like Percy Shelley and William Shakespeare,” he says.
However, while a student at Moraine Valley Community College, in Palos Hills, Illinois, he worked part-time at a cabinet factory where he met three other people who also held earlier ambitions to be writers that led them to full-time careers in the factory. That was a pivotal moment, he says. “I changed gears and learned computer science instead”.
Trading Books for Binary and Bits
After college, he joined Oberweis Securities, overseeing their Information Systems (IS) Department. From there he moved on to Tech Support and Development at System Software Associates in Chicago, Illinois – at the time the largest IBM midrange software company in the world.
Rick joined AdvantEdge through its acquisition of Physicians’ Service Center, where he was Director of IS. He led the migration of PSC’s medical billing database to a new software platform under AdvantEdge. Rick’s team was responsible for implementing Virtual Manager enhancements that originated from Lombard’s legacy system – things like specialized interfaces with a Robo-Calling vendor, automated Skip Tracing, Denial Management Reporting, and enhancements to the interface import engine. A few years after joining the Virtual Manager Development team, the Chief Information Officer at the time; Manny DaSilva, asked if he could take over Virtual Manager interfaces.
One of his favorite parts of the job is working with all the groups from AdvantEdge Operations, Client Management, and clients. “I’m a competitive person and I want to see the company succeed. Working with interfaces, the value to the company and our clients is very evident and it’s easy to see the fruits of our labor.”
Overcoming any issues that might arise from data formatting issues or setting up new clients just comes with the territory. “It’s two sides of the coin,” he says. “If something goes wrong at 3 a.m. in the morning on Sunday, we must act quickly to solve an issue such as one that could affect a client’s ability to bill. We have to get them up and running as quickly as possible.”
At the same time, he says, “It’s a very exciting job to be a part of. There’s always a lot going on.”
Rick isn’t always working. He recently relocated to Tulsa, Oklahoma, where he enjoys spending his free time with his two grandchildren. He also enjoys reading at least one or two books per month, and is actively involved in his church.
