Makers: Blake Madden, Hospitalogy
David McCarthy
“Makers” is a new interview series with (official and unofficial) healthcare and health tech creators who are making industry dynamics and trends easier (and more entertaining) to understand.
Some days, I like to think of myself as a latently talented healthcare market analyst. I like to think that I can pour over screens of investor decks, utilization data, market maps, and headlines, and uncover macro-level insights about the healthcare system and how all the pieces are shifting together (and apart) like tectonic plates.
Blake Madden, founder and creator of the Hospitalogy newsletter and a community for healthcare executives, proves I’m decidedly not that. It requires a business fluency that most don’t possess. But Blake does. Tapping his experience as a financial analyst and using an omnivore’s media diet, Blake is behind one of the most visible newsletters in healthcare and health tech today.
I chatted with him recently to learn more about Hospitalogy, his approach to creating it, and the distribution win he loves most.
In a tweet, what do you create?
My newsletter, Hospitalogy, breaks down the business of healthcare. The content is focused on deep dives into strategy, M&A, finance, and innovation among provider organizations, digital health firms, and payors.
Who are your subscribers, and what do they care about?
One of my biggest questions I’ve had to answer in becoming a full-time creator and identifying my newsletter niche has been "Who do you write for?" To that end, ultimately, I write my newsletter for four personas:
The health system or health plan CEO
The investor (VC or PE) wanting to learn about emerging or existing investment trends
The consultant wanting to stay on top of big moves in healthcare
The startup founder who wants to know who to partner with, addressable markets, or what they're up against.
Ideally I just want to help all of these personas in their day to day to make informed decisions for their organizations and understand the big moves & players in healthcare.
Firmographically, of my ~24,000 subscribers, around 30% of my audience are provider organizations (physician practices, hospitals, and other services verticals) , 30% are risk-bearing organizations (health plans, enablement, ACOs, etc), 20% are investors/consultants (advisory/valuation), and the other 20% are digital health (vendors, software, tech-enabled stuff).
What is your best-performing content, and how do you measure it?
Usually my quarterly or annual roundups of big themes or trends earn the highest open rates and the most shares. Other content pieces that tend to do well are deep dives into big M&A (e.g., CVS-Oak Street) or original thought / analysis essays.
My open rate has hovered around 60% for the most part over the past 6 months. But I know for certain when a piece performing really well is actually when I get a bunch of written responses to the newsletter with thoughtful subscribers sharing their perspectives, feedback where I might expand, or other commentary. Typically, the more responses, the more shared/better performing newsletter, the more subscribers that come in.
The other high form of flattery I love getting is when someone tells me they saw my graphic or essay shared in their internal channel or among their team members. That's an incredible honor, and I love when it happens.
What content or brands inspire your work?
I love creators with original thought, clear analysis, and are hard working. Mario Gabriele (the Generalist) and Packy McCormick (Not Boring) come to mind, as does Nikhil Krishnan - a fellow healthcare creator (Out of Pocket).
There are also great visual newsletters that provide me with inspiration for my visuals and content. My favorites are Chartr and Visual Capitalist.
What is in your creator tech stack?
I keep everything in Notion. I also use Notion to save my articles into various sub-categories that I use for my Tuesday “news roundup” send.
I use ChatGPT to research companies, edit, and generate standardized formats for the link roundup portions of my Tuesday newsletter.
For research, I dive into consulting white papers, company case studies, twitter, reddit, EMMA bond disclosures for health systems, and, of course, public/private company presentations.
For newsletter publishing and scaffolding, Workweek uses Sailthru. I also publish my content online via Workweek's site on Wordpress. I use Feedly as an RSS feed to capture links through preferred healthcare news sites, and subscribe to probably 50+ healthcare newsletters. (I know, I'm crazy.)
Some of the best insights, though, come from networking and offhand conversations with people I've developed relationships with. I really have a desire to learn from them and their roles in their organizations, which helps me identify what trends are happening where and what they're paying particular attention to.
As far as visuals are concerned, I'm a former consultant by trade, so I use good 'ole Powerpoint and Excel for those!!
What's on your roadmap for 2024?
Continue to grow the subscriber base among industry professionals, expand my existing paid community to more members, network with more industry professionals, get some speaking engagements as a “stretch” goal, and continue to monetize Hospitalogy with Workweek's help!
What is your "optimistic contrarian" take on healthcare for this year?
From the health system side of things, I actually think we will see a rebound in utilization, which helps alleviate some financial health concerns. From an innovation perspective, I expect some cool, tangible ways artificial intelligence enters healthcare — think more verticalized products / software specific to healthcare to generate advanced insights. Finally, I expect to see market pressures alleviate in the back half of 2024, leading to eased pressure on startups and some interesting IPOs among late-stage startups
Do you offer sponsorship opportunities?
I do! We offer some pretty customizable stuff along those lines. As a newsletter, I offer primary ad placements at the top of each edition and secondary ad placements within the body (about two thirds of the way down). The Workweek team and I work with the sponsor's marketing team to understand the correct vision for the ad, and I write all of the copy myself.
Some other tactics that have seen amazing success for sponsors have been custom virtual events/webinars and sponsored deep dives. In the latter, I write an entire newsletter essay about the company, its products, the problem it's trying to solve, or the topic that sponsor wants to educate subscribers about.
Finally, I have the paid executive community, which is not a “sponsorship” but still a line of monetization. We're definitely still early in the monetization process, so if anyone else has any ideas let me know!
Lastly, if your content had a walkout song at publication, what would it be?
The Imperial March (Darth Vader's Theme) — I'm only half joking.
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Blake Madden is the founder and creator of Hospitalogy, a WorkWeek newsletter about the business of healthcare. Learn more about his work at https://workweek.com/brand/hospitalogy/.