Meet Teri Armstrong: NextGen Development Director

What do data analysis, taxidermy, and neonatal care have in common? They’re all elements that make up the life of Teri Armstrong, Director of Development at TempDev. 

The world of healthcare began calling Teri long before she settled at TempDev. Her 30-year-long career in healthcare includes working as a nurse, a stint in kinesiology at a family practice, to her current role of captaining data projects that keep the gears of medical systems churning. 

She began her healthcare journey by exploring caregiving at a pre-nursing program. As part of her course, she joined a shadow program at the neonatal intensive care unit, where she fell in love with the process of caring for newborn babies. After completing the nursing program, she graduated from college with a Bachelor's degree in kinesiology and exercise science from the University of Northern Colorado, and launched her career working in family practice clinics. While she truly enjoyed taking care of her patients, she eventually sought out a different path that pivoted her focus to healthcare IT, without wavering in her deep passion for patient care.

In 2008, she made her transition to IT and started working as a superuser for a system called ENTergy. She worked her way to the EMR manager, where she was introduced to NextGen for the first time. While on-site at a clinic in Iowa ten years ago, a mutual friend introduced her to TempDev CEO Laura Miller. Impressed by Teri’s clear leadership skills and technical know-how, Laura hired her on the spot. 

At TempDev, Teri Armstrong is a compassionate and innovative leader of the development team. As a Mirth-certified professional, she uses tools like SQL, XML, and Javascript to build custom integrations and perform white-glove data conversion services. She also performs NextGen EHR and practice management development to help doctors, nurses, and administrators efficiently communicate and document patient care.

In her day-to-day work, Teri embodies the role of a data detective. She approaches each data conversion and system integration as one big puzzle waiting to be solved. She takes pleasure in the process of assessing a system, deconstructing it, and piecing it back together with surgical precision to import it into NextGen in a way that makes sense for users. The result? A new system that is more streamlined, more efficient, and ultimately, a better end-user experience.

“It involves a lot of investigation and transforming unusable data into useful data,” Teri said. “The end goal is always to ensure that doctors experience a seamless transition when changing from one system to another. It allows them to do their job without inconveniencing glitches that may shift focus from patients.”

The process of data conversion isn’t always straightforward, according to Teri, and can be a bit like putting square pegs into round holes, but those are the types of challenges she’s drawn to. 

“I enjoy the complexity of the process behind data conversion,” Teri said. “It also has a forensic element to it; which I like. Going into a system and establishing how it was programmed, and then going to restructure it another way is quite interesting. It feels like a puzzle that is missing the corner pieces, but we always get the picture right."

One of the most rewarding projects Teri worked on involved helping a medical group create a template for logging COVID-19 vaccinations. With Teri’s guidance and quick thinking, her client was able to effectively distribute COVID-19 vaccines to thousands of citizens at a critical time. The template allowed the medical group to easily create new patient charts, make appointments, validate vaccine availability and send information to registries instantly. The interface also featured a built-in consent document that patients signed via a third-party app, copies of which were then automatically imported into their medical records.

In all of her projects, Teri is known for her skill in bringing order to chaos in the health system, using her well-honed detective skills to decipher problems and create elegant data solutions.

When she’s off the clock, you can find Teri on her back porch at her home in Colorado, powering down with a glass of wine. Teri is a self-proclaimed sommelier, especially when it comes to bold reds and bubbly. Teri cherishes the time she spends with her family the most. She recently celebrated her 32-year wedding anniversary, with her high school sweetheart. She is very close with her kids Tessa (28) and Toby (22), who chose strength and determination to describe their mom. Teri loves fishing, hunting, and enjoys pretty much anything outdoorsy. After a long day in the great outdoors, she can be found cooking up her signature stuffed poblano peppers with carnitas and enchilada sauce. In a role quite different from her own at TempDev, Teri likes to lend her husband a hand at his taxidermy shop. 

When she’s not taking in the mountain air of Colorado, Teri's favorite place to visit has been Costa Rica. “I loved the beach, the ocean, the trees, the monkeys, everything; that was my favorite vacation,” Teri Armstrong said.

If you would like seasoned data conversion and system integration experts like Teri Armstrong to update your dated system, contact us here or by calling at 888.TEMP.DEV.