Looking back one more time at 09

Am I the only one who had a hard time coming out of the holiday break? For all the forms of stinkiness 2009 brought the healthcare industry (financial stress, healthcare reform froth, etc.), I certainly am looking forward to this, the year 2010. Yet here it is, January 8th, and I’m just now getting around to the obligatory “year-end wrap up.” Maybe the desire to hibernate given the frigid temps and ice-chunked streets here in the Twin Cities has something to do with it. Oh well, better late than never.

Rather than provide an in-depth analysis of the trends and key moments of 2009 (break out the No-Doz, yo!), let’s look at one simple metric – the most popular blog posts of last year. Is there something we can glean from the list? First, here are the top five posts from the Interval blog, with title, publish date and total pageviews:

• #1. “The economic crisis: Tipping point for healthcare consumer behavior?” (March) (609 page views)
• #2. “Truth #4: If you want to know what will work in healthcare marketing, don’t ask your customers” (July) (478)
• #3. “Truth #2: Healthcare marketing needs a serious shake-up” (January) (380)
• #4. “Truth #3: Great healthcare marketing requires great healthcare leaders” (May) (204)
• #5. “Hospital awards – the madness continues” (September) (156)

I have one overall reaction to this list: awesome!!! The first entry is understandable given the economic maelstrom healthcare faced in 2009, and in retrospect, the post has some fairly ominous overtones (if some of the predictions come true, hospitals will be facing quite the financial malaise in the coming years).

But if you can get past that Scrooger, the other four make me want to leap for joy. Because they mean we’ve hit hundreds of people with messages we believe are essential to moving marketing forward and improving its station within healthcare organizations. Certainly, not everyone agrees with our points in these posts, and it’s fair to say posts 2-5 could be considered somewhat controversial. Even then, that means the battle has been joined, the debate engaged, the conversation had. And that, from our standpoint, deserves the label of “awesome.”

We’re very much looking forward to starting more fires here in 2010. And thanks for giving us a read!