Health newsletter publishers facing hard times.

The problems that are plaguing the health care industry are also hurting many of the newsletter and specialized information publishers that serve this market.

NL/NL talked with more than a half-dozen B2B publishers in the field and found varying degrees of frankness, but almost without exception all admit that they are finding it extremely difficult to get new subscribers to their established publications.

"The biggest challenge and change for us is that we used to be able to send out, with a great deal of assuredness, large mailings and expect to get well better than dollar-for-dollar in return. That has changed. Some of it might be the e-commerce web business," said David Schwartz, publisher at National Health Information in Atlanta, which has 12 health-related newsletters.

The comforting news is that for most publishers renewal rates have remained stable and that the market has "bottomed out and will soon rebound," according to one publisher.

While there are many segments within the health care field, it is the publications that focus on servicing the provider community, health systems, hospitals, physician groups and HMOs that have been particularly hard hit.

The turmoil with consolidations, mergers and acquisitions and even bankruptcies in the health care industry has reduced the number of potential subscribers in the marketplace and made it more difficult to sell new subscriptions, particularly to those publications with a higher price tag.

"When you look across the health care newsletter publishing industry, you see publications priced in the high $300s and $400s, and I'm not sure that such prices are sustainable in the field," asserted one publisher.

Most of these publishers are turning to new titles and new products to augment revenue and improve the bottom line. Typical is the decision by Manisses Communications Group in Providence which is finding new revenues through advertising and subscriptions with its first magazine, called Behavior Healthcare Tomorrow.

Publisher Fraser Lang said the decision to supplement its newsletters with a magazine has been a "great success" and the company is also finding additional revenues and advertising dollars with its move into the directory field.

Launching new publications is also a tactic taken by publisher Robert K. Jenkins of Health Resources Publications in New Jersey. He launched an e-health care market publication aimed at the manufacturers, distributors and technology companies that are selling into the health care field.

"The publication is going real well," he said.

"And reimbursement is a hot issue so we started a newsletter to provide an overview on the overall aspects of reimbursement," Jenkins said. "It's not meant for the financial manager; there are all sorts of publications that cover that niche. It's for the person that needs an overall view of the reimbursement area. It's delivered electronically."

Jenkins feels that this is a time for publishers to "make some long-term management decisions about the viability of their publications" and decide which publications should be folded, merged or sold.

Most of the publishers said that they are taking steps to enhance the editorial content of their publications to make them more valuable to subscribers.

"Things like content really matter and we are paying a great deal of attention to this," reported Richard Biehl of Atlantic Information Services in Washington, D.C. He said that he is paying his editors more in order to get and retain top talent.

Biehl, like other publishers, said his company "was experiencing more difficulty with initial sales but that his firm was holding pretty strong with its existent customer base.

He also said he is "experiencing success with new starts in areas that are really hot."

An exception to the downturn in this industry appears to be the story of Leslie Norins's Global Success Corp. in Naples, Florida, which has successfully launched 30 newsletters in that many months. The newsletters cover coding reimbursement and/or practice management for different medical specialties (NL/NL 6/15/00).

One publisher said Global has been so successful because it has taken physician coding and split it by specialty.

"Realistically, a pediatric practice has a certain number of codes that they use as does a cardiology practice," he explained. "Everything else is not meaningful to these physicians, so by targeting to a specific need you get into smaller markets overall but it is 100 percent targeted to that practice and is extremely useful to that physician and his staff."

Most of the health care publishers expect that there will soon be an upturn in the market.

"Markets go through these kinds of ups and downs and health is no exception. I think like many macro markets it is cyclical and so it's been in a down cycle and hopefully it will soon be in an upward one again," David Schwartz said.

Robert Jenkins similarly concluded: "There is no way that the health care industry is going to be in the doldrums for long. Not with the aging population in the country."

Schwartz, P.O. Box 15429, Atlanta, GA 30333, 404-607-9500, fax [phone], nhionline.net.

Lang, 208 Governor St., Providence, RI 02906, 401-831-6020, fax [phone], [e-mail], www.manisses.com.

Jenkins, 1913 Atlantic Ave., #F4, Manasquan, NJ 08736, 732-292-1100, fax [phone], [e-mail], wwwhealthrespubs.com.

Biehl, 1100 17th St., NW #300, Washington, DC 20036, 202-775-9008, fax [phone], www.aispub.com.

Norins, 850 6th Ave. North, Bldg. 2. Naples, FL 34102, 941-261-4335, fax [phone], [e-mail], www.medville.com.