Hospital pubs are strong - periodicals

Hospital pubs are strong

Manufacturers and distributors that can afford to advertise their products to hospital managers as well as end users have three distinct publication choices in the hospital market.

Ideally, an advertiser should be in all three books - Modern Healthcare, Hospitals and Health Week. This is because their circulations only partially overlap even though they report many of the same titles as readers. But most marketing, sales and advertising managers have limited budget, and can afford to be in only one or two of the administration books. And even then, an advertiser often buys a lot of wasted circulation to reach decision makers on his product or service.

Target audience

All of the publications reach hospital CEOs and their immediate subordinates, including chief financial officers. The publishers make usually convincing arguments that these managers play important roles in buying products and services used by both administrative and clinical health care workers.

All offer not only senior level administrators as key decision makers for advertisers, but also almost two dozen other titles of administrators, physicians and nurses. Titles such as radiology administrators and directors of pharmacy have been added over the years in efforts to attract new categories of advertisers such as manufacturers of X-ray film, imaging equipment and pharmaceuticals.

Other titles, such as medical director and chief of staff, have been added in recognition of the committee approach to major decision making in hospitals. A medical director, however, doesn't get involved in picking a brand of diagnostic equipment or surgical tables, unless he is a radiologist, pathologist or surgeon. To reach the imaging equipment user, a publication has to reach and be interesting to radiologists as well as the medical director.

Key readers

That all of the publications give subscriptions to clinical department heads and administrators is an indirect admission that advertisers aren't convinced that CEOs and CFOs select brands of X-ray film and sutures without input from the users.

In addition to top management, all three publications give subscriptions to materials managers and/or directors of purchasing, medical administrators, directors of nursing, laboratory administrators and radiology administrators.

As an example of one-upsmanship, Modern Healthcare goes to 3,517 radiology administrators, Hospitals, 3,175 and Health Week, 2,993. And, reflecting its editorial emphasis on imaging, Health Week also gives subscriptions to 1,399 chief radiologists.

Actually, the three publications' circulation strategies are quite different when it comes to giving advertisers exposure to department heads and managers in charge of clinical departments.

Health Week is giving more subscriptions to physicians such as chief of surgery and chief of cardiology and is putting a higher percentage (16.6% of its subscriptions) in hospitals with 500 or more beds - the big, rich facilities that account for more than 60% of the industry's patient days.

Hospitals is the most strictly hospital-oriented publication. It has a total qualified circulation to hospitals of 89,511 (87%) of 101,909 total qualified, compared with 68,996 (85%) of 80,966 for Modern Healthcare and 55,444 (73%) of 76,292 for Health Week. Other qualified readers, depending on the publication, include managers of nursing homes, home health-care agencies, health maintenance organizations, freestanding clinics, consultants, lawyers and architects.

Buying influences

A close examination of a publication's circulation statement can reveal who the important buying influences are in hospitals, because the publishers try to give advertisers the readers they want for their ads.

One problem is that the BPA statements, which are supposed to make it easy to compare circulations, are remarkably incompatible, especially Health Week's.

Health Week uses titles such as director of purchasing and materials management while Modern Healthcare and Hospitals use chief purchasing officers. This can mean that HealthWeek goes to both the materials manager and the purchasing manager or to only one in each hospital. And it can mean that the other two magazines go to anyone in purchasing who asks for a subscription, including the chief purchasing agent for administrative supplies. Actually, HealthWeek's titles are more descriptive and the other two books may have to conform with it instead of Health Week conforming with them.

Editorial product

Modern Healthcare, Hospitals and HealthWeek are all strong editorial products produced by established publishers. All are aimed at advertisers whose prosperity depends, at least in part, on decisions made by hospital managers as well as the end users of medical, surgical and diagnostic supplies and equipment.

Modern Healthcare, a weekly news magazine, is the best magazine for advertisers selling to the chief executive officers, chief financial officers and administrators of not only Hospitals, but also hospital chains, group purchasing organizations, nursing home chains and home health care chains. It also has a strong following among directors of nursing and some department heads. It is well read by officers on boards of trustees of not-for-profit hospitals.

Modern Healthcare works the hardest for its news and stories and packs them with the most information. Lots of news briefs scattered through the publication force readers to leaf through all the pages. (In the interest of full disclosure, between 1976 and 1986, this writer edited Modern Healthcare, and former employees work for Hospitals and HealthWeek.)

Hospitals magazine, published 24 times a year by a for-profit subsidiary of the American Hospital Assn., has come back strongly since Modern Healthcare became a weekly news magazine two years ago. Hospitals has a strong following among a sizable number of CEOs and is probably the strongest with COO's, vice presidents and department heads.

The AHA publication gives readers a good mix of news briefs, features and AHA statistics that can't be matched by its competitors. Hospitals often is closer to the cutting edge when it comes to trends in hospital operations, which it covers better than the other two publications.

Health Week is the struggling biweekly newcomer. A very attractive tabloid, it has a chance to become the industry leader, because its format gives it a very newsy, must-read look. Given a choice of the three publications, a reader is most likely to pickup Health Week first, because its front page stories scream to be read.

Health Week is trying to be the Advertising Age or Automotive News of the health care industry, aggressively covering suppliers and international news as well as what's happening to domestic hospitals. As a result, its coverage of hospitals and its appeal to hospital managers is substantially behind the two magazines at this stage in its development. Over the years, hospital executives have shown little interest in reading about suppliers.

If Health Week continues to build its circulation in the departments of large Hospitals, becomes a weekly and provides editorial coverage to match, it could become the leading publication in this category in three or five years.

Circulation

Editorial products don't always match the circulation profiles the publications offer in their audited circulation statements. Hospitals does the best job of covering operations, but the publication with the largest percentage of its readers in departmental jobs is Health Week at 48.2%, compared with Modern Healthcare at 38.8% and Hospitals at 29.9%.

A news tabloid always beats a news magazine in readership derbies and advertising sales when they serve the same readers. Unfortunately, Health Week still appears to be seeking its niche and audience. It is highly popular with CEOs of larger hospitals but seems to be relatively unknown by COOs and lower level hospital managers. This should change as the publication matures.

Health Week's initial audit report from BPA shows that while it has the highest percentage of readers qualified in person within the last year at 95.7%, it has the lowest percentage (52.1%) who returned signed written requests for subscriptions. The balance had to be collected by telephone. As readers become familiar with the publication, more will return their annual written requests for free subscriptions.

Modern Healthcare had the highest written requests (74.5%) compared with 73.5% for Hospitals. A subscriber is always more likely to read a publication he or she has personally requested than one requested by his or her boss. Hospitals' circulation includes the highest percentage of subscribers (19.8%) whose companies requested subscriptions, compared with Modern Healthcare (16.6%) and Health Week (0.9%), according to the publishers' latest BPA statements.

All of these publications attract more non-clinical and services advertising than clinical and product advertising. This is because the readers, administrators, personally buy more services than products but also can and increasingly do veto budgeted product acquisitions and the use of high-priced products. This is one reason a few pharmaceutical companies are advertising in the administrative books.

In recent years, much of the product advertising has been service advertising by large companies paving the way for corporate agreements with Hospitals, just-in-time deals and stockless purchasing programs. This year, that advertising has been cut back substantially as companies reorganize and cut promotional budgets, according to the publishers. HealthWeek has poured extensive editorial resources into covering the products that hospitals are spending big dollars on - information systems and diagnostic imaging. This effort is attracting some additional advertising from companies serving those markets. Some of the following recent group purchasing contracts were reported in the September issue of Hospital Materials Management:

* General Medical, Richmond, Va., signed an agreement with American Healthcare Systems, La Jolla, Calif., to supply all medical supplies and equipment to AmHS alternate site and long term care facilities. General Medical will provide inventory management services to the associated physicians of its member hospitals.

* The Ohmeda Division of BOC Health Care Inc., Madison, Wis., sold $500,000 worth of anesthesia equipment to AmeriNet Inc., St. Louis, under the purchasing group's TargetBuy program.

MDT Corp., Torrance, Calif., received a contract award for its Castle lights and Castle sterilizers.

In the TargetBuy program, the supergroup surveys its members about equipment needs and acceptable manufacturers, then does a survey analysis before entering into contract negotiations. Members commit to buy before negotiations begin.

* A number of medical-surgical vendors signed agreements with Health Services Corp. of America, Cape Girardeau, Mo.

Equipment contracts were signed with Hill-Rom, Batesville, Ind., and Support Systems International, Charleston, S.C.; dressings contracts with The Kendall Co., Boston, and Johnson & Johnson Patient Care, New Brunswick, N.J.; a packs and gowns agreement with Surgikos Inc., Arlington, Texas; an agreement for needles and syringes with Becton-Dickinson and Co., Rutherford, N.J., and Sherwood Medical Co., St. Louis. Contracts also were signed with Abbott Laboratories, Abbott Park, Ill., and Baxter Healthcare Corp., Deerfield, Ill.

HSCA put together its portfolio of contracts in three months, following its break with the supergroup, AmericaNet Inc., St. Louis.

HSCA membership now stands at 947 acute-care hospitals with 130,000 acute-care beds and nearly 650 alternate-care facilities.

* The following medical-surgical companies were awarded contracts by MedEcon Services, Inc., Louisville, Ky. Most are two-to three-year agreements.

Dermacare, Louisville, Ky., and Bio Clinic Corp., Rancho Cucamonga, Calif., won the contract for convoluted foam pads with potential volume of $2.6 million. Sheridan Catheter Co., Argyle, N.Y., received an award for endotracheal tubes, estimated at $1.25 million. Kimberly Clark Corp., Irving, Texas, a new vendor for isolation gowns, won a contract estimated at $1.75 million. Medical Action Industries, Farmingdale, N.Y., and Kendall Healthcare division of The Kendall Co., Boston, will supply laparotomy sponges, estimated at $4 million. (Other agreements with MedEcon are listed in HMM, Sept.)

                 Hospital industry publications
                  Health Week     Hospitals     Modern Healthcare
Frequency:        Bi-Weekly       Semi-Monthly  Weekly

Qualified Circulation:

 - Free           58,251          94,406        66,739
 - Paid           18,041          6,089         14,227
List Price:       $60/year        $50/year      $110/year
Parent Co.:       CMP             AHA           Crain

Sources: Modern Healthcare, Hospitals, Dec. BPA; Health Week, Feb. 1990 BPA

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