Make it look like you really know healthcare — what the experts read to stay current
One of the things I love most about Silicon Valley is that it’s full of people with deep technical skill sets, seeking to make impacts in industries where they don’t have significant prior experience. It’s often by bringing perspective from outside an industry that entrepreneurs find ways to deliver delightful human-centered experiences. But those same outsiders face a steep learning curve on a new industry, especially like healthcare.
At a dinner with friends who are all data scientists (with non-healthcare backgrounds) the question came up:
“How do you stay on top of what’s happening in healthcare?”
In addition to listing out my favorite resources, I asked the question to some really smart, really healthcare people including Christina Farr, Jenny Gold, Fred trotter and Abe Gong, who helped compile 7 categories of suggestions:
- Go-to data on healthcare (cost, coverage, economics)
- News on the healthcare industry
- Coverage of the Health IT industry and regulatory updates
- Health system primers
- Employee benefits
- Worker’s compensation
- The digital health community
1. Rich, accessible, and original healthcare data
Kaiser Family Foundation (KFF) is an independent entity focused on national health issues and the US role in global health policy. Need definitive stats on the percentage of Americans receiving health insurance through employers, forecasted trends in drug spending, projected enrollment in state health exchanges or the mix of benefits offered by employers? KFF produces beautiful graphs & clean data sets.
Bulletin on Aging & Health from the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) is a jump into the deep-end of academia. But it’ll make you sound smart at a cocktail party and half the papers are incredibly fascinating. A recent paper found that when people are diagnosed with diabetes, they buy more healthy food and about 10% less high-calorie junk food. At least for the first few months.
HealthData.gov is easily searchable and deeply populated by federal, state, and local data sets to lend gravitas to any slide deck.
2. For news on the healthcare industry
STAT news, published by the team at the Boston Globe, covers developments in health & medicine. I think about STAT as the way to learn about cool medical discoveries and what matters to practitioners in healthcare. Pro-tip: subscribe to the free email newsletters as a way to go deep on your area of interest, like pharma, care delivery or biotech.
Kaiser Health News (KHN) has no relation to the Kaiser health system, other than a shared benefactor. KHN is a fantastically accessible source of original reporting on health policy & politics. Major focus areas include: mental health, insurance coverage, aging, and medicare/medicaid. Many of the news pieces you hear about health on NPR are actually from KHN authors liked the intrepid Jenny Gold, whose recently wrote about “Post-Election Stress Disorder.”
Morning eHealth from Politico covers the intersection of healthcare & technology. This daily email is designed for policy wonks and covers local, state and federal news/hearings/rumors around healthcare tech. “What We’re Clicking On” is a great way to broaden the news sources you consume, with links to 4–5 interesting articles. The tone of the whole thing is conversational: as if written by the super-smart chief of staff to a tech CEO prepping for a dinner in DC.
Fierce publishes a variety of news aggregators including FierceHealthcare, which focuses on the at-scale industry players (largely insurers and health systems) and FiercePayer, which helps you step into the shoes of a healthcare exec with headlines on things like member acquisition, incorporating data into care delivery, and specific states’ involvement in the insurance market.
Chriss Farr at FastCompany was suggested as a trusted source by many. Chrissy is a thoughtful, informed observer and sometimes commentator, having written for KQED, Venture Beat, Reuters, and others. Sometimes, you turn to Chrissy for the better-explained and better-grounded story that others are telling but don’t understand. Other times, she’ll write about something you didn’t realize was happening until you read her piece, then you see it happening everywhere.
3. Coverage of Health IT and regulatory updates
There’s a lot of money in HIT, and with significant revenues come industry-focused publications. Two of the top ones are Modern Healthcare’s free newsletter called HITS and histalk.com very health IT focused forum
Brian Ahier writes about the contingent of people and products focused on health information exchanges, and the news affecting them.
Keith Boone gets into the weeds on some of the regulatory and technical developments, but if that’s what you’re looking for, he’s your [motorcycle] guy.
4. Health system primers
Fred trotter’s Hacking Healthcare: A Guide to Standards, Workflows, and Meaningful Use on health IT is a little bit out of date, but still the best way to make sure you understand the acronyms, the interplay of products, system participants, etc. When you’re trying to understand how one piece of technology interacts with the rest of the system, his primer is the ultimate guide.
Jonathan Bush of Athena’s Where Does it Hurt? on building businesses in Healthcare is worthwhile.
5. Employee benefits
I’ve always had an interest in the employee benefits industry, with a real focus on trying to understand the products offered and the perspectives of people within employers and insurers directing spend.
Employee Benefit News (EBN) is one way I get inside the head of the benefits buyers and advisors. If it’s being written about in EBN, it’s probably being asked by or of the head of benefits or being pitched via brokers. Retirement, Wellness, Voluntary, Exchanges & Tech are the major categories. I’ve found actual pricing data for wellness programs in EBN and used it to identify and contact benefits buyers in target companies.
Workforce Magazine (published by content and conference specialist Human Capital Media) is like the coffee table book of HR Leaders.
It’s not a news sources, per-set, but the RAND report on workplace wellness and their accompanying research are the definitive statistics on everything wellness related with one exception: you’ll never see mentioned the pricing of program components.
6. Worker’s Compensation
Joe Paduda’s Managed Care Matters blog is the perennial heavyweight: his insightful commentary is grounded in data, and his frequent posts provide unparalleled awareness of all things related to worker’s compensation. Joe also posts frequently about PBM (pharmacy benefit management) in a way that is accessible yet specific. He’s the first to do tear-downs on new data sets, which prove especially helpful when trying to unpack what’s only referenced in most articles.
Work Comp Roundup is more than a blog, it’s a gateway to training, resources, and commentary provided by Michael Stack. If you’re interested in learning more about the industry, a $99 monthly membership in Michael’s CompClub is an easy purchase.
7. Coverage of the digital health community:
Our dinner conversation was most focused on ways that digital health people can figure out what’s happening in the much broader (and more profitable, established, and intractable) world of traditional healthcare. Those are the resources highlighted above. Digital health companies and their employees, funders, and partners have plenty of inward-looking sources of information, including:
mobihealthnews is intensely focused on the digital health ecosystem. For many members of the community, it’s required daily reading but can sometimes feel like an echo chamber.
Paul Sonnier puts together a comprehensive weekly round-up of news on established companies and global events where people prance around talking about how they’re going to establish companies. Paul’s reach is broad, providing a nice way to parachute in and audit an area of interest like genomes, drones, or fitness. Paul’s been a stalwart and visible member of the community and you can join his LinkedIn group.
Rock Health’s Rock Weekly is another way to broaden your regular reading, with thoughtful links to mainstream articles about digital health and studies informing the industry. The newsletter is also a definitive and uncluttered source of information on venture funding — with regular broadly-cited reports on industry capital and a weekly update showing which companies got which funding and from whom.
Startup Health offers a weekly newsletter with a clear focus on their portfolio companies and clear, accessible listing of upcoming events relevant to people and companies interested in digital health. While Rock Weekly feels like a stronger voice about technology, the Startup Health newsletter seems more skewed toward healthcare systems and operators.
Tincture is a relatively new effort from serial digital health entrepreneurs, writers and observers described as “open source thoughtware.” It’s less about companies and more about big ideas, and worth watching. Contributors include Thomas Goetz, Aneesh Chopra, Bonnie Feldman, Margaret Laws, Alexandra Drane, Esther Dyson, and Naveen Rao.
Please leave comments with your favorite sources, and I’ll update this article and the one on LinkedIn accordingly.
