Medicare reimbursement can make or break a healthcare business. A place to keep a closer eye on the way the Medicare winds are blowing is MedicareNewsGroup.com.
The independent news site – based just outside Chicago, Illinois – started drawing its first visitors earlier this year (it now gets about 30,000 unique visitors monthly). But it’s positioning itself to gather more influence around policy and other Medicare topics. It just announced the first four members of its advisory board: Reagan and Clinton Medicare adviser Stuart Altman; Carter and Clinton adviser Dr. Robert Berenson; University of North Carolina medical school dean Dr. William L. Roper; and President George W. Bush adviser Gail R. Wilensky.
The organization is currently focused on targeting journalists to meet its goal of elevating the national discussion on Medicare by providing more informed and intelligent analysis of Medicare programs. It offers a free, embeddable widget anyone can use; is engaged in a series of media training seminars; and is trying to strike content-sharing deals to leverage its content. About 250 journalists are registered on the site, said Everett Mitchell, a former managing editor at The Detroit News who runs Medicare NewsGroup’s editorial team.
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But in the end, Mitchell said Medicare NewsGroup wants to be the go-to Medicare resource for everyone: from journalists to insiders to consumers. The dearth of reporting on the topic, Medicare’s complexity and the ascension of Medicare-focused Paul Ryan as the GOP vice presidential nominee make a site like Medicare NewsGroup a necessity, Mitchell said.
The site is already full of good intel for anyone on the B2B side of healthcare. It carries white papers and reports back through 1998, aggregates legislative updates from Govtrack, and gathers latest news from across the Web on Medicare while writing some unique reports (in particular its series of plain-English Medicare FAQs and its Understanding Medicare section).
“There’s a thirst out there for Medicare News and information and how to accurately report and decipher what is going on,” Mitchell said.
The company has received some private investment, Mitchell said, and makes money through site sponsorships (Humana has joined in).
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Medicare NewsGroup’s publisher is Judi Israel Rosen, the founder of Colchester Consulting Group and a former vice president with Bain & Company
