Leadership Directories, a resource on government leaders and lobbyists for more than 40 years, has expanded its online listings into health care.
Leadership Directories, a
longtime compiler of listings on government leaders, has branched out into
health care with Health Focus, its first online database covering a particular
industry.
Health Focus holds
information on 150,000 leaders and 8,000 organizations across the U.S. health
care industry, including government, hospital systems, medical schools and
trade associations.
Known for its listings of
government employees and lobbyists, the company was founded in 1969 as Monitor
Publishing and renamed Leadership Directories in 1995. Its listings are now
available in print, online, on demand and as data feeds.
Leadership Directories
announced Health Focus on June 15.
Health Focus includes
rankings and contact information for government agencies, health care
providers, distributors, hospitals, assisted-living centers and nonprofits such
as research firms and medical schools.
Listings for health care
organizations will show information on revenue and budget, number of employees,
affiliations, joint ventures and IT providers, along with links to social media
pages on Facebook and Twitter.
For IT companies working on
building
HIEs
(health information exchanges), or networks of interconnected EHR (electronic
health record) platforms, the database provides listings on state government
offices involved in those projects. It lets users expand an HIE record to see
which health care facilities participate.
Transparency to comply with
government mandates is one reason easy access to health care leaders is needed,
according to Gretchen Teichgraeber, president and CEO of Leadership
Directories. The database could help break down silos in the health care
industry, she told
eWEEK.
"Health care is
becoming increasingly interconnected and collaborative, and this database not
only allows you to know but also to see those various components that are part
of one ecosystem," Teichgraeber said.
Health Focus allows users to
find industry contacts such as chief medical officers, IT executives, marketing
managers and purchasing directors.
A subscription to Health
Focus costs $2,500 per year and $1,250 for an additional seat.
The company has added Flash-based
visuals to its databases, Sue Healy, vice president of products and content for
Leadership Directories, told
eWEEK.
This functionality allows searchers to view the relationships of one company to
another using Flash animation and mouse-over link nodes.
"More recently we have
been focusing on taking all of the back-end structure and taxonomy to build
visually delightful experiences on the site that are Flash-based," Healy
said. "Instead of coming into a hierarchical grid of taxonomy and putting
a check box next to 'cancer,' because that's your subject of choice, you can
click on a colorful wheel that has various subjects. It expands to show little
figures of people who specialize in cancer."
A SQL Server database with
Boolean searching and proprietary taxonomy allows users to search for leaders
tagged within the health care field, according to Healy. A search for
"purchasing" will yield results for purchasing agents, procurement
workers and related purchasing titles.
"If you're looking for
the chief technology officer at hospitals of a certain size, you can do that in
a few clicks," Teichgraeber said.
Meanwhile, the database
sends an "add/change/delete file," or updates through email on
changes that have occurred in a saved search, Healy said. Users can export the
file to Excel or Outlook. Health Focus also lets users add their own
information to a customized file for specific details about a company.
Health Focus can also handle
up to four queries at a time. Users can configure the search filter to skip
health care organizations that may not list a fax number or phone number. Job
seekers can also view vacant positions at hospitals, Healy noted.
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