JANUARY 5, 2009

First Year Review and Future Considerations

By Dr. David Edward Marcinko; MBA, CMP™

Publisher-in-Chief

By Hope Rachel Hetico; RN, MHA, CMP™

Editor-in-Chief

By Ann Miller; RN, MHA

Executive-Director

Well, readers and Executive-Post subscribers, time sure does fly. This month marks the beginning of our third calendar year of production [2007-2009]. We started in October 2007, but, since the first three months were in beta, we’ve really been in alpha publication for little more than a year. Anyway, we thought we’d use the anniversary occasion and the impending New Year to recount some of the blog’s statistics and accomplishments, and to talk a bit about where we might be going in the year to come. We recognize that this comes in the midst of the Wall Street meltdown, and the healthcare credit squeeze; nevertheless an anniversary is an anniversary, and since the holiday season is the reason; here goes.

Damn Statistics

First, a few basic stats: We’ve posted a total of 850 times in the past year, a bit better than two every day. The average post is about 750 words, which means we’ve written approximately 637,500 words. By way of contrast, our 500 page book the Business of Medical Practice runs about 200,000 words, and the average Harry Potter book clocks in at about 150,000. Our print companion journal-guide is two volumes, 1,200 pages long, and is peer-reviewed.

More Info: www.HealthcareFinancials.com 

Readership:

The blog is moderated and we’ve covered a broad array of topics; about 50. In addition to regular subscribers, the site is averaging about 750 new views or hits a day – that’s an underestimate of the overall readership since hundreds of people subscribe to e-mails that provide the full text. (Parenthetical note: we are probably going to change those full text e-mails to shorter e-mail alerts that prompt you to click over to the site – sorry folks, but it is useful for us to know how many people are actually visiting the website, so join now: http://feeds.feedburner.com/HealthcareFinancialsthePostForcxos

Views:

Excluding the e-mail-only readers, the average posting view is up about 350% from the traffic during the first quarter. All told, there have been almost 325,000 views of the site since launch. There are more than 60,000 registered users (folks need to register to get e-mail alerts or post comments), and we are now averaging many more unique visitors per month (one IP address visiting 10 times counts as one unique visitor). Our viewer hit-to-subscriber conversion ratio is about 5:1

Posts:

The most popular posts, by far, involved physician reimbursement, DRG and personal financial issues. But, we are not very good at predicting which posts will catch a wave and become popular in the rankings. Health IT, marketplace competition, and big pharma are also popular as are charity care topics and medical practice management issues. Health law, public policy and politics, is growing, as well. And, you’ve been terrific with your comments: there have been more than 550 of them since launch; about one per day. They have been interesting and respectful – we’ve only needed to delete a handful on account of “bad words” or insensitivity, and our most prolific commentator has been a dentist.

Going Forward

What are the plans going forward for 2009?  We’ll make some technical enhancements to the site, which will make it easier to post pictures, vlogs and videos, and host reader polls. The site crashed a couple of times over the year and we’re working to make it more stable. We may also post fewer, but longer articles, for more in-depth analysis and discussion. This would make the Executive-Post less like a daily newspaper and more like a semi-weekly magazine with gravitas.

We may also go to a larger font size; from Arial 10 point – to Arial 11 point, for aging eyes. And, we will experiment with colored fonts, diagrams, photographs and more interesting visuals. We are also “going-green.” So, please advise if you have any other ideas or rich-media preferences?

Advertising Possibilities

And yes, we are exploring the possibility of external advertising, rather than internal sponsorships.  We don’t love the idea either, but our staff and writers do put a lot of time and energy into the technical aspects of the site, and – to be honest – we spend between 18 and 24 hours a week on it. So it does seem reasonable to try to capture some revenue. Please be assured that we won’t agree to host ads on it unless we can do it tastefully, unobtrusively, and there is an editorial/advertising firewall (i.e., we learn the identity of the advertiser at the same time you do). Our guess is that it will happen at some point, but we are not in any rush (we’ve already rejected a few proposals). If we ultimately choose to advertise more, we’ll comfort ourselves (or rationalize) that we are in the company of the New York Times, the New England Journal, even NPR.

Topics

We plan to continue writing on the things the most interest us, particularly at the intersection of personal profit and medical mission. This is the mico-economic version of our macro-economic print guide Healthcare Organizations [Journal of Financial Management Strategies].  The print guide has been growing nicely, too. Here is a copy of its Table of Contents, for review and possible premium subscription. We’ve been very pleased by the number of e-mails and calls asking us to look at an article or consider commenting on an issue – we do so about half the time, so keep those cards and letters coming.

View TOC: toc_ho

Cudos

Now, let us take a moment to thank the good folks at the Institute of Medical Business Advisors, Inc for all their help www.MedicalBusinessAdvisors.com Particular cudos to Margaret Campbell and Steve Brittner at Standard Technical Publishers, too www.STPub.com  Most of all, thank you all for reading and being active participants. We’ve written two dozen books and a couple of hundred articles, many housed in the Library of Medicine, National Institute of Health [NIH] and Library of Congress; but nothing we’ve ever done has gotten as much thoughtful and prompt feedback – from hospitals executives, doctors, nurses, administrators, reporters, policymakers, financial advisors, wealth managers, old friends, and more – as this blog. It is uniquely fulfilling. 

Conclusion

As always, your thoughts and comments on this Medical Executive-Post are appreciated. Healthy and Happy New Year 2009 to all!

Speaker: If you need a moderator or speaker for an upcoming event, Dr. David E. Marcinko; MBA – Publisher-in-Chief of the Executive-Post – is available for seminar or speaking engagements. Contact: MarcinkoAdvisors@msn.com  or Bio: www.stpub.com/pubs/authors/MARCINKO.htm

Our Other Print Books and Related Information Sources:

Practice Management: http://www.springerpub.com/prod.aspx?prod_id=23759

Physician Financial Planning: http://www.jbpub.com/catalog/0763745790

Medical Risk Management: http://www.jbpub.com/catalog/9780763733421

Healthcare Organizations: www.HealthcareFinancials.com

Health Administration Terms: www.HealthDictionarySeries.com

Physician Advisors: www.CertifiedMedicalPlanner.com

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Link: http://feeds.feedburner.com/HealthcareFinancialsthePostForcxos

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