Medical Economics is leader - physicians' personal finance magazines

Medical Economics is leader

Physicians concerned about their incomes turn to several strong money and practice management magazines for information about investments, sideline businesses and marketing strategies.

Pharmaceutical companies are the primary advertisers in these magazines, which are as important to advertisers and physicians as medical journals, such as the New England Journal of Medicine, and various primary care and surgical journals.

The advantages physicians' personal finance and practice management magazines have over the clinical journals are they are easier to read, better illustrated and frequently entertaining. Personal finance and practice management publications appeal to physicians who practice solo or in small groups and is moderately-to-very concerned about maintaining and increasing their incomes.

Clinical journals, on the other hand, are more likely to be read by academics, researchers and physicians who are more fascinated by medicine and science than by their checkbooks.

A third class of physicians, the hospital and medical society politicians, are more likely to read American Medical News and state medical society newsletters. Some pharmaceutical companies need to be in all three types of publications, and others can zero in on their target markets if they understand the appeal of each type of publication.

Pharmaceutical advertisers seem to run ads aimed at specialties rather than at different physician mindsets. Almost none of the ads in these publications appeal to the immediate interests of their readers - personal finance and practice management.

With only an occasional exception, the benefits touted in pharmaceutical companies' ads are directed at patients, who seldom see the ads. It is assumed, correctly for the most part, that if a patient benefits, his or her physician will receive the credit for prescribing the right drug.

Perhaps, because of overly cautious lawyers, few pharmaceutical company ads, openly sell a drug's direct benefits to the physician. These benefits are:

* Patient satisfaction

* Provider convenience

* Low malpractice risk

* Fulfilled patient expectations

* No hassles: Drugs are on most hospital and HMO formularies.

Medical Economics is the leading Money or Personal Finance type of magazine for primary care physicians and surgeons. Physician's Management, a virtual clone, also produces very professionally written and edited articles and tends to put more emphasis on practice management than personal finance.

Physician Financial Management is more of a financial newspaper and doesn't invest in the major studies that frequently grace the pages of Medical Economics and Physician Management. It does, however, put considerable effort into producing a newsy and readable product.

Medical Economics

Medical Economics is the industry leader in the physician practice development and personal finance niche of publishing. Published twice a month, in 1988 ME generated more than $26 million in revenues, according to a fact sheet included in its media kit.

The ME editorial package is designed to give readers a large dose of information about managing their money. Stories cover everything from stock and bond portfolios to life insurance for the spouse and kids. In the fall, ME publishes its widely followed surveys of physicians' incomes by specialty and other demographic breakdowns. Such surveys give a magazine a tremendous amount of credibility with readers and advertisers.

Protecting assets - money and time - from malpractice suits also receives considerable coverage in the forms of trend stories by staff writers and first person horror stories by physicians. A third category of stories cover hobbies and travel experiences. Practice management articles by practice management consultants, physicians and staff writers round out the selection of features. Regardless of the writer, all articles have the same spit and polish, indicating heavy editing and rewriting by wordsmiths. This magazine definitely is edited for readers rather than for the writers.

However, the features do tend to be a bit long for readers who are as busy as most physicians. Large type and relatively heavy leading, or spacing between lines, makes it easy to skim articles and makes them seem longer than they are.

Articles are illustrated by a combination of four-color paintings or drawings, usually placed at the beginnings of the articles. The heavy use of color at the beginning of each article allows the use of virtually no art through the rest of the article. The combination of four-color illustrations and four-color ads gives the impression that the magazine is more colorful than it really is. There are a lot of gray pages of text in ME, but they don't offend as much in this book as much as they do in the clinical journals.

Departments are placed in the front of the book and also help draw readers through the magazine. A department in ME is either a one- or two-page news briefs section or a question and answer section that asks questions submitted by readers. Department titles include a memo about the magazine from the editor, professional briefs, letters, financial briefs, practice management and money management.

Physician's Management

Physician's Management is a monthly magazine on practice management and lifestyle. The editorial package places a greater emphasis on pegging stories to recent events and trends than Medical Economics, and it provides a forum for critics of the American Medical Assn.

Like its bigger competitor, PM mixes departmental briefs and question and answer sections with longer features and uses a painting or photo to open each feature article. Over the course of a year, the magazine, like ME, publishes exclusive surveys of physicians' opinions on various subjects.

Recognizing that relatively few readers read past the first page of an article, PM assists skimmers with "Speed Read" summaries on each page. These summaries are 25 to 40 words long and are given whole columns by themselves. Thus, there is a lot of white space, which reduces the amount of copy and editorial effort needed to fill the magazine. Whether the "Speed Read" summaries pull readers through the magazine or cause them to spend more time looking at the jump pages and facing ads than the larger type summaries, or callouts, in ME is debatable.

A problem with both speed read summaries and pull quotes is that they are too general to be useful. What they are designed to do is to attract the reader to the text on the page.

Physicians Financial News

Physicians Financial News is a tabloid that is published 21 times a year. In 1989, PFN had two separate editions - one was for general practice, family practice and osteopathy physicians and the other was for internal medicine, cardiology and gastroenterology physicians. An edition for orthopedic surgeons was introduced in January.

PFN has the advantages of a tabloid - several stories on every page, editorial around all ads and the ability to run most stories on one page or less. Its design clearly is meant to remind readers of The Wall Street Journal. And the editorial content is more down in the trenches than the slick features in Medical Economics and Physicians' Management.

Yet, looks can be deceiving. PFN looks like a newspaper, but its stories are all relatively timeless features that have been dug up by an enterprising editorial staff. Hard news fans must look to the AMA's weekly American Medical News tabloid, which also carries a small personal finance and practice management section in each issue.

In addition to a mix of features and briefs on most pages, PFN speeds readers through its pages with big headlines and boldface introductory paragraphs on major features, which cover the same range of stories as ME and PM. PFN also publishes detailed financial information on investor-owned health care providers and suppliers in each issue.

Circulation Comparisons

Medical Economic's full-run edition goes to 170,133 qualified readers, including 19,323 paid qualified subscribers. Another 8,127 non-qualified subscribers also pay for their subscriptions, according to the magazine's circulation audit statement for the six months that ended Dec. 31.

Physicians specializing in internal medicine (23.6%), family practice (20.9%), general practice (15.5%) and obstetrics and gynecology (9%) dominate MEs' list of qualified readers. Thus, the magazine makes the most sense for pharmaceuticals that are likely to be prescribed by most physicians, including specialists who spend as much as 50% of their time delivering primary care. Surgeons and other specialists deliver primary care when they don't see enough referrals to generate their target incomes. About 85% of MEs' readers are in office-based practices, and the balance are hospital-based or in their residences.

None of the magazines' audited circulation statements breakout readership by the number of physicians in group practices of various sizes and types or by the number in staff or group model health maintenance organizations. Because these physicians are often salaried, they are less likely to be interested in the practice management and personal finance articles in these publications. Although the magazines may have the information, the BPA statements also don't provide information about the ages of subscribers. Older physicians tend to be less active practitioners and therefore less important to some advertisers. At the same time, however, older physicians may treat more older patients, who are the heaviest users of pharmaceuticals.

A total of 45,801 surgeons receive free subscriptions to Medical Economics for Surgeons, which carries ads and editorial directed toward surgeons. Of the surgeons, 19,029 are general office based surgeons and 13,644 are office-based orthopedic surgeons. Office-based surgeons account for 91.1% of the surgeons receiving the magazine. Interns and first year residents, residents and full-time hospital staff surgeons also receive the sugeons' edition.

Using the magazine's BPA statement, it is pretty obvious that the surgeons' edition makes the most sense for advertisers who want to reach general surgeons (47.5% of readers) and orthopedic surgeons (32.5%) or all types of surgeons.

The two editions of ME, the largest circulation personal finance and money management magazine for physicians, reach about 45% of the 478,511 physicians that the AMA says were delivering patient care on Jan. 1, 1988.

Physician's Management has a six-month average free controlled circulation of 121,124 qualified subscribers, according to its December 1989 BPA statement. About a fifth the size of ME in terms of total revenues, according to an industry research service, PM doesn't have any qualified paid subscribers and has only 542 nonqualified paid subscribers, compared with Medical Economics' total of 27,779 paid subscribers.

Another indication of the relative strengths of the two publications is that 82.6% of ME's subscribers (85.1% for the surgeons' edition) have been qualified during the last 12 months, compared with 61.8% for PM, according to their audited statements.

A high one-year renewal rate indicates a very clean mailing list; PM's is relatively weak in the first year but with a 33.6% qualification rate for two years, it is able to report that almost 96% of its readers have been qualified within two years. Both magazines depend on American Medical Assn. and American Osteopathic Assn. lists for substantial numbers of their qualified subscribers.

ME reports 72.7% of its requests for subscriptions are in writing from individual physicians and the balance of its mailing list comes from the AMA and the American Osteopathic Assn. And PM reports 54% of its qualification was by written requests from subscribers and 44.9% from the trade associtions. Another 1.1% of PM's requests were either solicited or accepted by phone. ME is the clear winner in terms of the quality of its list of subscribers.

Physicians Financial News uses the trade associations' lists for all of its 128,596 subscribers, who receive the publication whether they want it or not. Since PFN readers are all qualified within one year, it can claim to use the cleanest list, assuming the trade association lists are updated annually as physicians renew their memberships. But its list suffers in comparison with ME and PM because its BPA statement doesn't indicate strong demand from subscribers.

Physician's personal finance and practice management publications not only compete for readers' time with each other but also other non-clinical publications such as American Medical News, Group Practice News, single-sponsor personal finance and practice management newsletters, The Wall Street Journal. This competition gives advertisers three very good books to choose from.

Table : Personal finance magazine circulation

              Medical             Physicians      Physician's
              Economics           Finacial News   Management
Frequency     Semi-Monthly        Semi-Monthly      Monthly

Circulation

 -Free          150,810             128,596        121,124
 -Paid           19,323             None           None
List Price      $84/year            $75/year       $35/year
Parent Co.    Medical Economics   McGraw-Hill      Edgell

Sources: Publishers; Qualified, six-month average, Dec. 1989 BPA

COPYRIGHT 1990 J.B. Lippincott Company
COPYRIGHT 2004 Gale Group