Editorial: Modern Healthcare celebrates 40 years of quality journalism

Celebrating the anniversaries of Modern Healthcare and its owner, the family-run media company Crain Communications Inc., is an act of joy and gratitude.

This year marks the 40th anniversary of this news organization and the 100th anniversary of Crain Communications. Crain is a third-generation, family-owned business committed to the highest journalistic standards: timeliness, accuracy, objectivity, authoritativeness and fulfillment of our readers' needs.

When it bought what was then called Modern Hospital in 1976, Crain brought to the publication a journalistic tradition and an ethos that had already built some of America's top media brands, including Automotive News, Advertising Age, Business Insurance, and Pensions and Investments.

Over the past four decades, the healthcare industry has achieved the vision reflected in that changed name. No longer just the “big white building on the hill,” today we cover integrated, health information technology-enabled networks of care focused on prevention as much as treatment.

We've changed, too. Over the past 40 years, Crain has helped Modern Healthcare navigate a host of business challenges—from burgeoning competition and the emergence of online and social media, to new advertising channels and the push for immediacy on the Web.

Throughout our evolution, Modern Healthcare has remained true to the Crain vision. While some media companies have succumbed to “pay-for-play” schemes, we remain a dispassionate broker of information, insight, knowledge, and yes, wisdom.

Modern Healthcare has only one purpose: to serve our readers. They comprise the clinical and business leaders who consistently push the envelope of innovation within health systems, hospitals, medical groups, insurers, pharmacies, clinics, imaging centers and other entities across the expanded continuum of care.

Over the past four decades, Modern Healthcare's award-winning staff has described, analyzed and synthesized healthcare's most transformative achievements, while serving as an industry guide and innovation champion.

That commitment will continue. As the healthcare industry undergoes inevitable change, Modern Healthcare will not waver from its commitment to our readers and customers.

The healthcare landscape is being rapidly transformed by disruptions in technology, care delivery and business models. We're seeing the emergence of virtual care, precision medicine, behavioral messaging, wearable devices and mobile payments.

Modern Healthcare will be there every step of the way as our readers and customers seek fresh strategies to leverage old and new technologies, empower consumers, manage population health, collaborate across disciplines and industries, and forge cultures of accountability and innovation.

I invite you to join us in celebrating our 40th anniversary throughout 2016, culminating in a special commemorative issue in July. We've planned an engaging program of anniversary activities throughout the year—from polls, surveys and special commentaries to profiles of pioneers and special awards for healthcare's engines of change.

Few publications have the opportunity to influence the attitudes, values and actions of those who sit at the helm of America's most important industry—the one that protects our health. Modern Healthcare has had that privilege for 40 years.

We look forward to serving as your main media partner for news, insight and strategic advice for decades to come.

Feel free to send me your ideas for our 40th anniversary commemoration at [email protected].