- About the Owner -

Kendrick Information Technologies is owned and operated by Bobby Kendrick.  You will notice I have placed the "Back" button at the top of the page so you can return without reading all the details about my life if you are not interested.  If you are interested, then read on...............

I was born in Roswell, N.M. in 1949, so I guess I am considered old!  I have worked in the medical field in one capacity or another since 1968 when I worked as an orderly in a hospital in Amarillo, Tx.  (Actually, I started there in 1967, mopping hospital floors at night to pay for my college education and rent!).  Before I left there 4 years later in 1972, I was director of "Inhalation Therapy".  My wife, Linda is largely responsible for that since she was one of the people who trained me when I was promoted from House Orderly to Inhalation Therapy Assistant.  (We were married on January 17th, 1970, only a few months after that "training" began!)  I moved to Dallas in '72 to go to school and never looked back.  I worked at St. Paul Hospital in Dallas from '72 until '74 under Dr. Jose Viraslov as a Respiratory Therapist, ICU Technician, and finally as Educational Coordinator.  I also became a Certified Respiratory Therapy Technician and state licensed Respiratory Care Practitioner during that time.  I was offered a position as Technical Director of Respiratory Therapy at Doctor's Hospital by a Dr. Eugene Tragus in '74 and moved there in August of '74.  I left there in 1980 to enter the homecare field and worked with several different companies as General Manager, including Medical Homecare Services, Glasrock Home Health Care, American HomePatient and Baylor Home Medial Equipment (all of my job changes during that time were a result of company mergers and/or buy-outs).  At one point in my career as General Manager, I was responsible for 7 branch locations and 135 employees.  Our intake department averaged 150 orders for durable medical equipment per day and booked as much as $1,500,000 revenue in one month.  I have been through no less than 20 JCAH and JHAHO accreditations and have never had more than 2 recommendations on any of them.   

My interest in computers was sparked in 1977 when the board of directors at Doctors Hospital in east Dallas budgeted approximately $30,000 for me to purchase pulmonary function test equipment.  I set up the lab and everything worked perfectly.  But I was concerned that it took almost 3 hours to calculate all the data from the patient's test after a visit to our "state of the art" pulmonary function lab since everything was done with a slide rule.  I had noticed an ad in the paper where Radio Shack was offering a new personal computer called the TRS-80 that could be programmed by the user to produce results almost instantly!  I approached the administrator (Gene Ward) with a request to purchase one of these computers and he gave me the approval I needed to kick-start my high tech career.  I bought the computer and took it home that day.  I spent the entire weekend learning to write programs in BASIC language.  In less than 2 weeks, I was able to write a program that enabled us to post pulmonary function test results on the patient's chart in less than 30 minutes instead of the usual 3 hours.  The doctors loved it, I had fun doing it, and I was a hero!  At that point in time, in 1977, I knew I would somehow make my living working with computers and programs.

Shortly thereafter came the "cost of living raise" from the hospital.  The only problem was, there were about 30 job grade levels, based on your job description, and within each grade, there were dozens of rates that had to be calculated, based on your step (of which there were about 25) and whether or not you worked the evening or graveyard shift.  Once a cost of living raise was announced, it was not actually applied to your paycheck for about 6 weeks since it took the accounting department that long to calculate the increase for each of the grade levels and the steps within each grade level.  I quickly surmised that I could write a program to do the same thing in minutes.  It took me about 10 hours to set up the initial database, but upgrades took only seconds afterwards.  Of course, the accounting department would not accept my numbers without checking them, so they did.  That only took about a month, after which time they agreed to let me calculate and print cost of living increase payscales from then on (which took me about 5 minutes as opposed to their 6 weeks).

At that point I realized there was a need to for someone to provide specialty software for managers to control their businesses, and I have continued to write specialized programs to accomplish this ever since.  I currently have written programs to manage equipment preventative maintenance, concentrator follow-ups, medicaid authorizations, E-cyl. tracking, infant monitor tracking, unit dose tracking, etc. 

In 1999, I was General Manager for a very large homecare company in the Dallas area and had been in the medical business for over 30 years.  About that time, I began to realize I could no longer provide the level of care and service to my patients that I was accustomed to for various reasons, so I decided it was finally time to me to leave the medical field and go into the technology field full time.  So I did.......

I started working on computers for other people in 1984 and soon discovered I could easily exceed my customer's expectations by simply responding to their needs promptly and solving their problems quickly and efficiently.  I frequently encountered situations (and still do) where a customer had hired other technology companies to solve their problems and they were unable to do so, or it took several hours and charged several hundred dollars.  I often find I am able to resolve the problem in a matter of minutes where my competition worked on the same issue for hours!  I actually had a customer call me who was referred by one of his friends.  When he called, he quickly notified me that he had a DSL connection problem and would not pay me a dime if I couldn't fix the problem.  I found out he had called two other companies in to fix the problem, and neither of them was successful, but they billed him anyway!  I was able to correct his problem in less than 15 minutes.  My customers often get angry when I am able to resolve their problems so quickly when others have not been successful, but they don't (and shouldn't have to) consider I have over 20 years experience in the computer field.

So I continue to run my business with one primary objective; satisfied customers.  People these days are so accustomed to being annoyed by getting poor customer service almost anywhere they go, it actually makes my job fairly easy.  I say fairly because geography and traffic in the Dallas area is a real problem.  And my ability to relate to people and instill confidence sometimes causes my customers to "abbreviate" their problems when they call for help.  I often get calls like "I got some computer problems I need you to fix.  I'll  give you all the details when you get here".  That kind of call makes it very difficult for me to decide whether or not I should commit to being at another customer's office in two hours or six!  And I won't even mention the sometimes horrendous Dallas traffic.  I always try to call when I see I can't make a scheduled appointment and then make them the first stop the next day, but occasionally I will get buried in a crisis and not realize the time until after six or seven o'clock!  So, even though I may not always make it to a scheduled appointment, I think punctuality is probably the only part of my customer service that is not well above customer expectations.  So I think I will continue doing it for another 20 or 30 years...............