By Jill Bleile, RxInformer Editor
It’s no coincidence that you’ve been with Healthesystems over 16 years and RxInformer is celebrating its 15th anniversary. You started up the publication soon after joining the organization. Can you tell us a bit about the genesis of the magazine and why you saw it as a need or opportunity?
We wanted to do something different than what was already being produced in workers’ comp – which at the time was mainly drug reports. And we wanted to provide something in service of the industry that would be useful and educational.
At the same time, we had all of these amazing thought leaders at Healthesystems – from clinicians to data analysts to technologists and pioneers in PBM/ABM programs (and we still do!). So we decided to give these very deserving folks a unique platform for sharing this knowledge and insight. While we were seeing blogs in the industry or articles published, at the time, there really wasn’t a magazine-style publication that served to educate, inform and share knowledge geared for workers’ compensation medical management stakeholders.
At first, RxInformer was produced by a party of two with insight and collaboration from our thought leaders; I foolishly served as issue planner, interviewer, writer, designer, and publisher, with one of our executives serving as reviewer and editor. I can look back at those old issues with both admiration and horror. I’m proud of where we started because it led us to where we are today. But, when I look at what the team produces and delivers today, it is honestly light years ahead of where we started – and that credit lies solely on the shoulders of our amazing team of writers and designers.
Our thought leaders have gratefully remained the same – with a few additions along the way. We have been so lucky to have a really established group of experts at Healthe who have been committed to our company for many, many years. RxInformer has grown up alongside them, with their care and attention.
I can’t say enough about how much our talented writers and designers have contributed to RxInformer. We started with short format articles covering a couple of topics of interest for a specific audience, and our writing staff today has managed to turn that into in-depth coverage of emerging topics, often covering many perspectives with insight relevant to so many workers’ compensation stakeholders. The quality of research and writing adds so much value to the publication. And our design team comes in and partners so well with our writers to transform the content into highly consumable and enjoyable experiences – both in print and online in our web version.
The early days of RxInformer consisted of a short-format newsletter-style publication with a few images used to grab attention; it has now evolved to a highly professional magazine-style, award-winning publication.
Tell us a little bit about those early days as a “staff of one” on RxInformer.
I would say I was a jack of all trades versus a staff of one. I had the support of thought leaders (at first a small list of clinicians, a data analyst and an industry leader, but then the thought leaders grew as we did!) and, as mentioned, the support of my VP to help plan and edit. He was my conduit to the industry and a great voice for what folks were talking about and the type of information they might find valuable.
Then came the chaos – scheduling and conducting interviews with our thought leaders and internal resources, conducting my own research, creating outlines, drafts and manuscripts. There was also a fair amount of begging folks to find the time to review drafts and assist with editing! It’s extremely difficult to concept, write, execute, design and edit yourself, by yourself. Especially when it is just one “project” of many – tradeshows, advertising campaigns, web presence, PR. You know, all of those other functions of Marketing that we couldn’t “hold the presses” on, so to speak.
Sometimes I would even write and design an article draft at the same time – in part to save time, but also because both concepts would come together in my mind. So sometimes our poor thought leaders would receive a manuscript draft to review, and sometimes they would get a full-blown designed article. Again, the process was chaos.
We also didn’t have a formal project management tool in place to support the back-end production like we do today. A lot was accomplished either by email, or by me physically stalking people. I vividly remember standing outside the door to one of our pharmacists’ offices, waiting for him to finish a meeting so that I could jump inside once his door opened to clarify something. Luckily, no one ever sent me away. That’s the absolute best part of producing a publication like this – being able to engage with super smart, great people from across our company who are willing to share their knowledge externally, in order to educate folks and bring some more clarity to workers’ compensation.
Such a unique and niche industry deserves a focused publication to support it. Everything in RxInformer is informed by workers’ comp experts because everything in workers’ comp – from the use of topicals or specialty medications, to legislative activity impacting our industry, to technological advancements – is based on a very specific occurrence: a human being getting injured while on the job. Each situation is unique to that individual, their injury, their treatment, the state in which their employer operates, just to name a few of the many complex factors that influence a claim’s outcome. And the ability to continually improve the system that supports this person requires a team of people who understand the system and can mine actionable insight for it.
Is there anything else you’d like readers to know about RxInformer that we haven’t covered?
I would just like to bring to light the extensive amount of work it takes from a small but mighty team of dedicated professionals to produce RxInformer magazine twice a year. It’s not their full time job, and it takes a labor of love to pull off producing a full-length magazine in print and digital formats amidst so many other efforts.
While the team is planning, interviewing, writing, designing and producing this magazine, they are also creating and delivering other valuable resources such as our Regulatory Recap and Workers’ Comprehensive e-newsletters, producing our Annual Industry Insights Survey Report, staffing our blog, writing content for our media partners, supporting our customers’ needs – the list goes on. By the time this print issue of RxInformer is released at RISKWORLD 2025, the next issue will already be in planning. The cycle never ends.
What keeps us inspired? The amazing feedback we have received over the years. It is such a great feeling to have an industry professional walk up and tell you that they loved an article in the latest issue. Or, even better yet, when someone tells you they read every issue of RxInformer from cover to cover and put it on their bookshelf to refer back to later. It is so rewarding knowing that our content is useful to someone in their service of this industry.
I’m also amazed that our talented researchers and writers find new and compelling topics to cover with each issue. Over its 15 years, and more than 230 articles published, RxInformer has covered A LOT of topics that impact workers’ comp. But there are always emerging issues, topics and trends to cover. There is always more insight to deliver.
