Best Healthcare Administration Blogs

Staying up to date as a healthcare administrator is no easy task. Healthcare’s location at the intersection of policy, technology, marketing, and public health means that an administrator must be current on several evolving fields at once. One of the best ways to stay at the cutting edge is to follow healthcare administration blogs.

Blogs have come a long way in the last 20 years. Once the territory of disaffected teenagers, they’re now considered an irreplaceable source of industry knowledge. It’s here that healthcare administrators can get curated news about the areas of healthcare that impact them most. And each blog is different: some will focus on a particular sector, while others will act as wide aggregators.

There’s no unifying blog for healthcare administration. Each blog has its own character, its own focus. To stay current in the field of healthcare administration requires staying up to date with several different blogs at once.

Below, we’ve gathered ten of the best blogs in healthcare administration in 2020, so you can mix-and-match the ones that work best for you.

Brian Ahier has been blogging for nearly a decade now—and it’s a decade that’s been the most transformative on record for the healthcare administration industry. His blog focuses on the intersection of healthcare, technology, and government. Recently, he has been publishing his work on the site Health Data Management, an authoritative resource for medical and health IT professionals.

A well-established thought leader in digital health, he’s posted in-depth analyses on key industry conferences such as Health Datapalooza, new national policy initiatives, and the integration of big data and blockchain into the healthcare administration hierarchy.

In addition to his scholarly contributions, Ahier is a board member of The Sequoia Project, an independent advocate for nationwide health information exchange. He’s also served on the Consumer Technology Task Force, a joint collaboration of the Health IT Policy and Standards Committees that makes recommendations on Department of Health and Human Services initiatives.

Outside of his blog, Ahier is regularly active on Twitter, which he uses to promote other people’s blogs, as well as articles he’s authored for various industry publications.

• Example Feature: The Road to Interoperability

Susannah Fox helps people navigate the intersection of health and technology. Her blog includes essays, analyses, and videos of public speaking engagements. Readers can also find research on digital health practices, online health resources, and demographic splits on key digital health issues. A regularly-updated “Now Page” makes it easy for readers to catch up on what Fox is currently working on, reading about, and pushing towards.

Fox served in the Obama Administration as the CTO of the Department of Health and Human Services, where she focused on harnessing data and tech to improve public health and welfare. A consummate expert, Fox has been profiled and interviewed by the Washington Post and the Wall Street Journal, and her research has been cited in publications that include the Journal of the American Medical Association and the New York Times.

Fox is also active on Twitter, where she boosts the signal for other thought leaders and shares her thoughts on health and tech.

• Example Feature: Cheese, Whisky, and Health Data

e-Patient Dave is a blog hosted by Dave deBronkart, a cancer survivor and leading advocate for patient engagement. Healthcare administrators can look to e-Patient Dave to find out how to empower patients in their own healthcare journey and take their needs into consideration when formulating policy and driving engagement. In addition to standard blog posts, e-Patient Dave provides links to news coverage, videos of speaking engagements, and outside publications.

Dave deBronkart’s book, Let Patients Help: A Patient Engagement Handbook, has laid out a new vision for patient engagement, empowerment, and experience. His TED Talk on the subject went viral, earning over a half a million views. A co-founder and chair emeritus of the Society for Participatory Medicine, deBronkart’s blog has appeared in Time, USA Today, Wired, and MIT Technology Review.

He’s also a regular presence on Twitter, where he focuses on issues of patient advocacy surrounding health data and digital health innovations.

• Example Feature: Superpatients

For healthcare administrators looking to stay abreast of changes to the health IT landscape, it doesn’t get much more official than this. The Health IT Buzz Blog makes regular posts about the latest developments on health information technology directly from the Department of Health and Human Services’ (HHS) Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC). Authors include industry experts and government officials, and content falls into the following categories: consumer engagement; EHRs; health data; health information exchange; innovation; certification; implementation; security; safety; interoperability; and usability.

The ONC leadership believes in two-way communication, and, as such, the blog is designed to foster a forum of engagement. The blog’s guiding principles include individual perspectives, prompt responses to comments, and active listening to the issues that readers find most important.

The ONC is regularly active on Twitter, and readers can subscribe to the blog’s RSS feed, or sign up for its email list, to get alerts when new posts are published.

• Example Feature: Three Global Health IT Takeaways You Need to Know

Run by Dr. Jason Shafrin, Healthcare Economist focuses on economic analyses of today’s healthcare issues. Active for over a decade, the blog has punched through to the mainstream several times, with appearances in Al Jazeera, The Economist, NPR, and the New York Times. Healthcare administrators who are looking for a way to translate policy headlines into financial equations can turn to Shafrin’s blog for an economist’s take on the subject.

Dr. Shafrin is a director and senior research economist at Precision Health Economics. His research interests include value-based purchasing, the health insurance market, and Medicare policy research. He received his PhD from UCSD in 2009, and has had scholarly work published in Health Affairs, JAMA, and Health Economics.

Readers can get regular alerts to new posts by following Dr. Shafrin on Twitter.

• Example Feature: Top Posts of 2019

BHR is one of the largest and most comprehensive news sources for the business of healthcare. Their website gets nearly two million visitors per month, and their original content is reproduced online, in-print, and direct-to-inbox.

While they don’t offer a singular blog per se, readers can sign up for free weekly newsletters, each of which covers a specific area of healthcare administration. Topics include supply chains; clinical leadership; revenue cycle management; blockchain; payer issues; and C-suite reports.

Becker’s Healthcare, which hosts BHR, is a go-to source for healthcare decision-makers. In addition to written content, they also host live events where healthcare leaders can exchange ideas and push the conversation forward. Between webinars, conference, whitepapers, online content, and printed content, all the industry’s bases are covered.

Readers can also follow BHR on Twitter for regular updates.

• Example Feature: The Cost of Healthcare Bureaucracy

The Healthcare Marketer is a blog run by healthcare marketing guru Dan Dunlop. Its posts get into the weeds about what works and what doesn’t in healthcare marketing. Here, healthcare administrators interested in the marketing side of the business will find book reviews, conference summaries, relevant podcasts, and reports on data analytics. Dunlop is an advocate of video marketing, and he practices what he preaches by posting videos on the subject.

Dan Dunlop is a principal at a healthcare marketing agency with a specialty in audience engagement. A regular fixture on the conference circuit, he’s also served as a guest lecturer at UNC’s School of Public Health and UNC’s Kenan-Flagler School of Business. Dunlop has been quoted in USA Today, Strategic Healthcare Marketing, and Health Governance Report.

Readers can follow him on Twitter to receive regular bursts of updates in what he calls The Dunlop Daily.

• Example Feature: 2019 Year in Review

KHN is a nonprofit news service focused on in-depth reporting on healthcare policy and politics, and how modern healthcare works. Key topics include health law; aging; industry; pharma; investigations; and data. In addition to extensive reports and feature writing, readers can also find links to podcasts on relevant healthcare administration issues.

An editorially independent arm of the Kaiser Family Foundation, KHN has been an integral tool for healthcare administrators over the last decade. The site accepts no advertising, and all its original content is free to read and share. Their stories regularly appear in the Washington Post, USA Today, and NPR.

KHN also holds an enormous following on Twitter, where they promote both original reporting and emerging issues.

• Example Feature: Must Reads of the Week

The Health Affairs Blog provides a subscription-free window into the world’s leading journal of health policy thought and research. This is about as meaty as a blog can get, and the content goes far beyond the bite-sized news that many aggregators provide. Here, readers will find academic sources and rigorous analyses of issues related to public health, health policy, and healthcare administration.

The Health Affairs journal articles are cited by US administration officials, US lawmakers, and foreign ministry of health leaders. As a nonpartisan publication, it’s read and referenced by lawmakers of all political persuasions. The blog contains contributions from noted health policy experts and commentators from a wide variety of perspectives, and has been cited in the New York Times, Forbes, and Reuters.

Consistent updates are provided on the journal’s Twitter account.

• Example Feature: What Is the Status of Research on Low-Value Care?

For healthcare administrators interested in boosting their knowledge of the marketing sphere, MM&M provides news, analysis, and trends related to pharmaceutical and healthcare marketing. As a supplement to the print magazine, the MM&M blog focuses on breaking journalism and in-depth features, but goes beyond written content to include links to both video and live events. Further resources are available in the form of whitepapers, webcasts, e-books, podcasts, and an agency directory.

First published in 1966, MM&M has stayed relevant for over 50 years. Each year, it makes numerous lists of the top influencers in healthcare marketing. MM&M also hosts its own industry awards program, which celebrates creativity and effectiveness in healthcare marketing.

Updates, reports, and links are available on Twitter.

• Example Feature: Health Media 2019 Year in Review