RXNT’s Founder and CEO, Randy Boldyga, sat down with John Frenaye from the Eye on Annapolis podcast to share RXNT’s origin story, the importance of data sharing in healthcare, and why technology needs to remain affordable for medical practices.
Please note: The following interview has been lightly edited for clarity and brevity.
25 years ago, RXNT’s Founder and CEO, Randy Boldyga, had a simple idea that transformed the healthcare industry: using technology to enable safer, more accurate prescribing. From the basement of his Maryland home, he and a small team built software that has empowered healthcare practices to deliver more accessible and secure care to their patients—and he broke this all down and more in a recent podcast episode.
Randy sat down with John Frenaye from Eye on Annapolis’ Local Business Spotlight podcast to share RXNT’s origin story, the importance of data sharing in healthcare, and why technology needs to remain affordable for medical practices.
Listen in to the full episode on the Eye on Annapolis website here, or continue reading for a recap of the Q&A segment of the podcast below:
Frenaye: What is it that RXNT does?
Boldyga: In a nutshell, we work with ambulatory physician groups to provide clinical software, which includes Electronic Health Records, Scheduling, and Electronic Prescribing. On the Billing side, we provide the Practice Management solution, which includes Billing and Scheduling.
Frenaye: So your software is essentially deployed in medical practices? Is that your core customer?
Boldyga: Ambulatory refers to medical practices that are outside of hospitals, like urgent care centers and hospice facilities—it’s any practice that is outside of the acute hospital setting.
Frenaye: Has cross-compatibility been a challenge for your industry, or have we moved beyond that?
Boldyga: Some national standards have been put in place in recent years, but it’s been a phased-in approach for adoption. Some vendors have adopted those standards and are moving at a much faster pace than others. Generally, I think we’re in a much better place today than we were just a couple of years ago. I think you’ll see over the next two or three years that the ability to share data with hospitals and other vendors in a standardized method is going to be prevalent, if not required.
Frenaye: Is RXNT more for a larger medical practice/medical group, or is it more geared toward an individual physician?
Boldyga: We work with physician groups of one, and also physician groups of hundreds. We can support everybody in between. That’s one of the challenges we run into; what works for a single doctor-physician group is much different than what works for a multi-specialty group of several hundred providers. You have to make that system work for everybody.
Frenaye: It seems very affordable, and like something that anybody can access if you’re in the medical profession.
Boldyga: We’ve done a good job of keeping the costs affordable for the smaller physician groups, and we like to think that even for the larger groups, they appreciate the value we’re bringing for the price. We’ve worked hard to keep that price affordable for all physicians.
Frenaye: How did RXNT begin?
Boldyga: I started RXNT as an Electronic Prescribing company to give doctors something that was going to have the most bang for their buck, and be the most beneficial to themselves and their patients. Electronic Prescribing was the first step to the adoption of a full medical record because there was so much value for a doctor.
Back in the early 2000s, [E-Prescribing] was a difficult process. They were writing prescriptions on a prescription pad, and there was no medical history on the patient. To send the script to the pharmacy, it required handing it to the patient, the patient going to the pharmacy, and the patient having to wait at the pharmacy while they’re not feeling their best. There were many inefficiencies, and the illegible handwriting was an issue. There was no pricing available to the providers, and they had no idea whether the medication was on-formulary, or off-formulary. So all of these things we were able to provide within the RXNT product. At the point of care, [with RXNT] the physician would be able to immediately know your medical history, see drug and allergy interactions, understand the best-priced prescription for that patient, and send prescriptions to the patient’s pharmacy of choice. All of these things compelled a provider to pick up a product like ours and use it without qualms because it’s providing them with value.
Frenaye: How did it begin for you? Were you ever in the medical industry or were you in the tech industry?
Boldyga: I have a history in both industries. I worked at the UAMS Medical Center in Little Rock, Arkansas, and oversaw the hospital’s IT systems there. That gave me firsthand experience in the inefficiencies within the medical field. I was also an IT guy by trade—I had been in the IT industry for 15 years before I even started RXNT.
Frenaye: Doctors are really pushed for time, which is why efficiency in prescribing and medical records is important. You’re providing so much benefit to a practice.
Boldyga: We’re creating all kinds of efficiencies, and we’ve been doing that for years, but I think it’s really going to take off in the next couple of years which is exciting to me. We’re going to be able to leverage artificial intelligence and make our products even more efficient. There are features like voice recognition within the software, but the efficiencies we’re going to see here in the next few years are going to be the “wow” factor.
Frenaye: Do you have any regrets over the last 25 years of ever starting RXNT?
Boldyga: No, I don’t have any regrets. It’s been a lot of fun. Early on, there were a lot of challenges especially with bootstrapping, which is always tough. There are a lot of reasons why companies don’t make it, but I’ve learned that you just hire really good people and surround yourself with people that are smarter than you and it’s gotten a lot easier.
Frenaye: Does RX stand for prescription, and NT stands for network technologies?
Boldyga: That’s correct. We actually took that idea from Microsoft back in the day. Microsoft had a product called NT, and that stands for new technology. I thought that was a great idea, and since the company is in networking technology, we decided to do the same sort of thing.
Frenaye: Where did you start? Did you start at that little house on West Street?
Boldyga: We started in my home in Anne Arundel County. I was living in a home that I was renting, and we took the first story, which was half below ground and half above ground, and started the business right there in my home. I did that for two or three years, trying to bootstrap and get it off the ground, and as soon as we generated enough revenue, we moved into our first building on West Street in Annapolis.
Frenaye: How large is RXNT right now as far as employees go?
Boldyga: We have 125 full-time employees, and then we have about 25 contracted individuals working for us.
Frenaye: RXNT was born in Annapolis, and we’re not known as a hub for software. Why did you stay here?
Boldyga: We found that Annapolis was an attractive place for top talent, and they had no problems moving here. They really liked the town and the cultural benefits of Washington, D.C. and Baltimore, which are both just a short drive away. The beaches of Maryland and Delaware are also an attraction, so we had no problem attracting folks out of Silicon Valley, Seattle, and other areas that are known for being big tech hubs. These folks were eager to get out of those areas in some regard.
Frenaye: Do you have any idea what you’d be doing if you didn’t get that tech bug?
Boldyga: I really don’t know. I’m not the kind of guy who’s just going to sit down on the beach or play golf all day. I’ve always been a curious person. As a kid, I broke a lot of stuff and got electrocuted a few times, trying to figure things out. I’m sure I’d be getting myself into some kind of trouble.
Frenaye: Is there anything that would surprise us to know about RXNT?
Boldyga: Our product is used by the US State Department. That’s something that most people don’t know. It’s in the hands of doctors who are supporting the Foreign Services. Prescriptions are generated by doctors around the world every day, and they’re sent electronically to the US government’s prescription dispensing system, which is managed by the Department of Defense.
Frenaye: So your software is deployed all over the world?
Boldyga: Yes, I think it’s in around 300 countries around the world [due to the US State Department and other customers], and we’ve been doing that for about 13 or 14 years now.
Please note: RXNT is only able to work with American-based practices, companies, and healthcare organizations.
We’d like to extend a big “thank you” to Eye on Annapolis and John Frenaye for hosting us on their podcast. You can listen to the full podcast episode with Randy here.
We’re proud to be an Annapolis-based business and are thankful for the support of such a great community. From our original E-Prescribing software tool launched in the early 2000s to new releases like our Advanced Reporting functionality in 2024, we’re continuing to help medical professionals nationwide deliver better care today, and for the next 25 years, too. We couldn’t do it without you!