My favorite healthcare business newsletters, and why I like them
Creator / Analyst Newsletters:
The Keckley Report: Paul Keckley does a great job of distilling ongoing healthcare policy and economic debates, and is unafraid to dive into big, hairy issues navigating complex stakeholder perspectives with ease. He pulls from a wealth of sources and works hard to give his subscriber base comprehensive updates. I draw significant inspiration for Hospitalogy from the Keckley Report.
Health Tech Nerds: Kevin O'Leary has a great analyst brain and knows the important threads to pull on in his weekly roundup of health tech and services news. It's why Health Tech Nerds has grown into a thriving community of folks in the health tech ecosystem, and I look forward to reading his Sunday updates that cover a variety of payor, provider, and venture topics from an analytical, data-forward lens (just the way I like it). I am a member of Health Tech Nerds and the discussions in the Slack channel are great for understanding ongoing topics in health tech.
Out of Pocket: Nikhil Krishnan is true to himself in the best possible way. His passion for healthcare, and changing healthcare by bringing new people into the fold, exudes through his writing and ongoing initiatives in healthcare courses / education and in-person events like Operations Knowledgefest. He's incredible at weaving in humor and memes into interesting healthcare topics with a ton of range - everything from sleep health to medical tourism. Nikhil's intellectual curiosity around healthcare allows him to explain and break down complex healthcare topics & areas in an easy to understand way, making healthcare a much more approachable industry for the rest of us.
Gist Weekly: Formerly known as Gist Healthcare but now under the Kaufman Hall umbrella, Gist does a great job of breaking down key information for healthcare folks in a digestible manner. The weekly Friday newsletter maintains a predictable format: 3 big healthcare stories, what they're reading, graphic of the week (with some of the best data-driven graphical information freely given on the healthcare inter webs), insights from Kaufman Hall, and podcast highlights. I subscribe for the graphic (and definitely draw inspiration for my graphics from these) along with Gist's perspective (the 'gist' - get it?) on big healthcare news to make sure I understand what's important from new developments in healthcare. Thoughts from Ken Kaufman and, separately, Lisa Goldstein are also must-read for anyone in healthcare, in my humble opinion.
Second Opinion: Reporter turned Managing Director Chrissy Farr has a vast network of healthcare and health tech experts she draws upon weekly for in-depth interviews and trend analysis of ongoing healthcare topics (ICHRA most recently comes to mind). She and I collaborated on a piece on health system finances and dynamics earlier in 2024, and Chrissy always has a pulse on where the healthcare puck is moving. I also appreciate her hot takes on X around marketing, writing well, and recent anecdotes from conversations with leaders in the industry.
Health Care Inc: Bob Herman has been around the block and along with the team of STAT reporters, this newsletter (and STAT as a whole) does a great job of breaking down key healthcare business issues. I will say, this newsletter is from the lens of investigative journalism so it tends to take a more 'skeptical' or dubious view on healthcare happenings - which is totally fine, healthy, and normal. Bob even includes memes at the end, which is incredible and much appreciated! STAT's Health Tech newsletter is also great, but Health Care Inc sits more in line with what I read and write about for Hospitalogy.
On the Flying Bridge: Michael Greeley knows his business, and it's apparent in his writing, bringing forth a variety of fresh perspectives and data together around important topics and theses. I particularly enjoyed his most recent analysis on the current economics at play within healthcare and health tech. This is my favorite type of content. Interweaving data with your narrative and way of thinking is pretty challenging to pull off (I feel like I should know!)
Medicare Market Insights: If you're interested in Medicare, Medicare Advantage, and the ecosystem revolving around the massive entitlement program, Jared Strock's newsletter is for you. Jared has vast industry expertise in this space and does an excellent job of breaking down news around Medicare, including original analysis for carriers, brokers, and other publicly traded companies, market-specific analyses, and ongoing regulatory changes.
Xpostfactoid: Perhaps Jared's counterpart on the ACA and exchange side (but more commentary-driven), xpostfactoid by Andrew Sprung is my favorite newsletter to read around ongoing policy issues centered around the ACA. Probably a good time to subscribe to this one given the potential looming changes coming to the exchange in a Trump presidency!
4sight Health: David Johnson and his team provide exceptional commentary and thoughts around current issues in healthcare. He's one of those rare individuals who isn't afraid to hold back and say what needs to be said.
Trilliant Health: Hal Andrews and Sanjula Jain offer a formidable one-two punch in writing and providing data-driven commentaries under the Trilliant Health newsletter and research umbrella
HISTalk: It's one of the OG health tech / IT forums and news sites. HISTalk's executive interviews are pretty solid, and they also share intel learned from readers (who comment often), off the radar partnerships and sales in health tech, as well as hot takes around notable developments (e.g., Forward's CarePods pivot)
Health API Guy: When he's not busy with his day job saving the world, Clark Kent Brendan Keeler posts comprehensive, witty summaries on plenty of health tech and interoperability topics. One of my favorites, all time, was this write-up on Epic. Probably one of my favorite introductions to a piece I've ever read. With that aside, I rely on Brendan to understand the other side of healthcare I'm pretty distant from to have a general sense of what's going on.
Healthcare Huddle: In similar fashion Out of Pocket, Jared Dashevsky writes in an approachable but comprehensive way about the inner workings of healthcare. He writes balanced, comprehensive overviews on recent healthcare events and provides his perspective through the lens of both an analyst and practicing physician.
The Health Care Blog: Self explanatory and another OG healthcare / health tech blog on the constantly evolving world of healthcare. There's a bit of everything for everyone on THCB - weekly expert interviews, thought-provoking opinions, whimsy, and more.
Healthcare DealFlow & the Healthcare Intelligencer: As a smart aggregator of information, JC Lupis has put together an excellent daily newsletter. It covers notable developments in M&A across all healthcare sectors and includes a section at the bottom for notable trend updates and upcoming industry conferences. For anyone tracking deals and working in M&A, this newsletter is a great way to stay on top of things.
Rock Health Weekly: Rock Health delivers comprehensive reports on various sector trends along with weekly fundraising news and top headlines they're reading each week. It's enjoyable, snackable, and high quality.
Regs & Eggs: McDermott Will & Emery's Jeffrey Davis has put together a brilliant newsletter on healthcare regulatory affairs, in the most digestible format a lawyer could ever muster. Great weekly read to keep a pulse on regulation from folks who really understand where they're headed. McDermott in general has a great content strategy for their firm.
The Healthcare Economy: Jeff DelVerne distills ongoing payor issues each quarter, diving into the Big 6 payors' earnings reports and teasing out the most relevant content for his subscribers.
The Elion Briefing: Every Tuesday, Bobby Guelich and Elion's team does a great job of distilling health IT sector market maps, interviews with executives with questions related to ongoing trends, and curated updates on partnerships and notable developments in the health IT space. It's pretty comprehensive and formatted well. I subscribe to these so I don't miss any big (or under the radar) news, but also for Elion's excellent reports, like its State of AI in RCM 2024.
Exits & Outcomes: Brian Dolan is an OG, writing in the health tech space for 5+ years. While his more robust newsletter is paid, he performs comprehensive analyses of marquee digital health firms including Omada, Livongo, Spring Health, Sword Health, Virta Health, and more.
HEALTH CARE un-covered: As a newsletter with similar energy to Health Care Inc, Wendell Potter uses his platform to write about profiteering and exploitation in healthcare, with a focus on managed care players. An important newsletter to understand ongoing trends and waste & abuse present in healthcare.
X=Primary Care: Also known as XPC, Paulius Mui, Kenneth Qui, and co. are on a hunt to improve primary care and find models that work for the future of the space. Their newsletter - and community, which hosts retreats often - dives into all sorts of dynamics affecting primary care. I enjoyed their overview of the direct primary care landscape in particular. Lots to learn from this excellent group of thinkers.
The Surgeon's Record: On a similar vein to XPC, Dr. Benjamin Schwartz does a great job of diving into everything affecting physicians, providing a fresh, balanced take on current healthcare issues.
Health Tech Happy Hour: Robert Longyear provides interesting, fresh perspectives on a variety of healthcare topics including health tech and policy commentary.
DigitalHealthWire: A nice aggregation newsletter for digital health and services news.
News Sources:
Besides STAT which is mentioned above, here are other news sources I read on a consistent basis:
- ModernHealthcare - the OG and gold standard.
- WSJ, NY Times, Bloomberg, WaPo - all have great healthcare and health sections of course.
- Beckers - good for catching anything I missed, providing summaries, and linking back to original sources or reports with solid information.
- Fierce Healthcare - all around solid and not paywalled.
- Axios Vitals - bite-sized, quick-hitting healthcare news.
- RamaOnHealthcare - a nice healthcare news aggregator.
- Politico Pulse - approachable way to stay on top of healthcare policy and regulatory happenings.
- Healthcare Finance News - self explanatory, but HFMA dives into the numbers and details nicely.
Honorable Mentions:
I also read / scan all of these but didn't want this to drag on forever!
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