Welcome to the debut issue of Health IT Strategist, the new electronic magazine brought to you by the publishers of Modern Healthcare and Modern Physician. What better way to deliver information about clinical and financial information technology to tech-savvy healthcare executives and physician leaders than through e-mail. Each issue will offer a wide array of news and feature stories on the clinical and financial challenges facing health IT strategists as they consider, implement and operate the latest clinical and financial information systems. Let me tour you through the electronic pages of Health IT Strategist.
Each issue features a cover story on alternating clinical and financial IT topics. The cover story of this month's premier issue examines the possible quid pro quo facing physicians who accept free or discounted PDAs from their traditional adversaries in the healthcare industry: insurance companies. Vendors also are giving away or discounting PDAs to docs through arrangements with physician membership societies. The question for physicians is whether the giveaways influence how they care for patients. The situation bears close monitoring by physician leaders and other executives who ultimately are responsible for that care.
Anchoring each issue is a second major feature story, again on alternating clinical and financial IT topics. This month's feature story looks at the dos and don'ts of negotiating a successful contract for a new clinical information system. "Some vendors will say, 'This is a partnership,' like it's a big warm, fuzzy hug. That's nonsense," says one of the experts we interviewed for the story.
As you can see by the angles of these two stories, we have a no-nonsense approach to editorial coverage. Putting the readers first has been the hallmark of Modern Healthcare since 1976, when Crain Communications Inc. acquired the magazine. We instilled that philosophy in Modern Physician, when we created it in 1997. And it will live and breathe on the electronic pages of Health IT Strategist.
Nowhere is that approach more clear than in another regular section of Health IT Strategist, "Peer to Peer." Each month, we'll turn over a page to a healthcare executive or physician leader who will describe in vivid detail the good, bad and ugly of his or her experience implementing clinical or financial IT. This no-holds-barred section will name names and reveal numbers. In this issue, Kenneth Ong, M.D., the medical informatics director at St. Vincent Catholic Medical Centers of New York, discusses his efforts to install a new pharmacy information system on a tight schedule.
Our editorial mix also includes news, opinion, briefs and a resource section that lists people, places and things brimming with useful information for our readers.
Pulling it all together each month is Joseph Conn, online editor/Modern Physician. Katherine Downing, Modern Physician copy editor/webmaster, assists Conn in the monthly production of Health IT Strategist. And supporting the new electronic magazine is the entire 28-member editorial staff of Modern Healthcare and Modern Physician, which will write, edit and design each issue. A complete listing of the editorial staff, including phone numbers and e-mail addresses, can be found on page 11.
From a technical standpoint, and again appropriately enough for our audience, Health IT Strategist's e-mail format is unsurpassed in the variety of electronic gadgetry available to subscribers. From the horizontal landscape format designed to fill the screen of a laptop computer to interactive links to other Web sites and internal functionality throughout, the editorial content and the information available to Health IT Strategist readers are without boundaries. We're confident you'll embrace our new publication as the essential read for a better understanding of clinical and financial IT.
