New promotion eschews fear in favor of greed.

Perhaps just the name of the company that product manager Gennifer Chenault works for is enough to indicate what she's up against: St. Anthony Publishing/Medicode, Ingenix Companies.

The Ingenix Publishing Group, a business unit of Ingenix Health Intelligence--which in turn is a segment of United-Health Group-produces books, newsletters, and electronic reference manuals for the coding, reimbursement, and managed care industries.

Titles are sold under St. Anthony Publishing, Medicode, and Ingenix brand names.

Ingenix Health Intelligence's products and services go to more than 100,000 providers, 1,500 payers, and 100 Fortune 500 companies.

"We're so big" Chenault says, "we don't know how to work as a newsletter company. Our size and structure don't allow us to move quickly to market. And the company works on a revenue basis, not an accural basis." That means she has to show profits much sooner than the average newsletter publisher.

Referring to the company's recent launch of Practical Guidance on HIPAA and EHealth for the Physician Practice, Chenault says, "We were late to market. We have several competitors out there [UCG, for one], and I didn't want to do what they were doing."

She says the usual approach of using scare tactics to market a new newsletter covering new legislation-in this case, the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA)--"no longer works!"

"Instead," Chenault says, "we waited for the right concept. We took a practical approach: 'Here's what you need to do'."

In the promotion copy targeted to physicians and those actually running the practice, Chenault says they promise concrete advice on what's going to drive the new technology. In fact, she says, the new legislation will spawn new technology to deal with HIPAA's standards.

Physicians are notoriously out of the loop when it comes to computers and electronic transfer of information, which the legislation calls for, so Chenault and her staff focused on the technical challenges-not using me usual scare tactics but instead offering to school subscribers on such topics as secure e-mail (for transferring patient records, for example) and other emerging e-health technologies.

The 12-page monthly, supplemented by e-health updates, features "expert advice that will help physician practices learn how to implement and comply with the HIPAA standards and how they can become more efficient and profitable using emerging e-health technologies."

Chenault says such promotional language is directed more to the persons running the practices-sitting in front of computer screens, looking to cut costs and increase revenues--rather than to the "off-line" physicians.

As for the unfortunate timing of their October launch, Chenault says, "I belong to an HIPAA listserv, and in the first week after September 11 there was grief, second week, less so, and the third week, not a word. So we went ahead with the launch."

St. Anthony 11410 Isaac Newton Sq., Reston, VA 20190, 703-904-3900, fax [phone].