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I launched my questionable blogging career just over a year ago. Frankly, I had no idea what I was doing. At the time I wasn’t even entirely sure what my niche was. I had a hobby in personal finance and a career in healthcare finance. Why not try to intersect the two? It is evident from my “start here” page that I was a little down on healthcare when I started Max Out of Pocket. I blame the fallout from participating in too many electronic medical record (EMR) implementations. A “re-start” here page is in the works.

But the Max Out of Pocket project has produced some unexpected results. I have met several interesting characters from across the internet who are actually interested in this stuff. Mrs. Max OOP and I took a trip to Ecuador to meet up with several like-minded individuals in my personal finance world. I even joined the ranks of Twitter after holding out more than a decade. Most importantly, it got me out of my comfort zone. Everyone needs to do that once in a while.

Well, things got really interesting this week when I got a note in my email from Mr. Colin Hung, CMO and Editor of Healthcare Scene. The email was notifying me that the one and only Max Out of Pocket had been selected as one of three nominees for a 2020 Medigy HITMC Award in the Individual – Blog of the Year category.

Say what?

2020 Medigy HITMC Awards

The Health IT Marketing and PR Community (HITMC) is something I had not heard of before. I stumbled across it several months ago when I realized I was interacting with some of its members on Twitter.

Truthfully, I have to say that I have been playing catch up ever since I joined Twitter. There was a bit of a learning curve there. My false assumption was always that Twitter was a time suck and something to stay far away from. The last thing I expected was to find an entire community of healthcare leaders who regularly meet on Tuesday nights from 8:30 pm – 9:30 pm to discuss real healthcare issues. I have been participating for a few months now. Evidently Mr. Hung is the Co-founder of #HCLDR and one of the managers of this community. It was established way back in 2012.

Since I started participating in the Tuesday tweetchat, we have covered all kinds of topics. From discussing what matters most in healthcare to the changing perception of healthcare, everything seems to be on the table. We even pondered what Florence Nightingale might have achieved with an EHR system. It’s been a lot of interesting discussions, to say the least. What I like about it most is it gets me thinking outside of the finance realm.

Evidently, these two communities intersect with each other. HITMC puts on an annual conference including one in Las Vegas that will take place in November. The original date was postponed due to the pandemic. I am going to definitely try and make that work. If not this year, definitely next year.

Individual – Blog of the Year Award

On June 30th, there is a live award event to hand out awards in 27 different categories. The event is sponsored by Medigy. They are known for connecting innovation decision-makers to authoritative information, institutions, people, and insights. In healthcare, this is huge and I am glad to hear they are supporting this awards event.

The award Max is up for is the Individual – Blog of the Year.

There are four different high-level categories:

• Individual Awards (this is where Max Out of Pocket lands)
• Healthcare Provider Awards
• Health IT Awards
• Agency Awards

You can view everything else at this link.

Max is really looking forward to this event and will certainly tune in to see what all these other creative people have to offer. I have browsed around several of the other award categories and wanted to call out a few I am looking forward to.

• Individual – Patient Advocate of the Year
• Individual – Podcast of the Year
• Provider – Blog of the Year
• Health IT – Video of the Year
• Agency – Marketing Person of the Year

Final Thoughts

I still have a lot to learn in this blogging world, but this has been a huge boost in motivation for me. It is really nice for someone (outside of Mrs. Max OOP) to take notice of some of the work I have been doing around here. Not only am I now officially an honoree, but I also have a whole new community that I can continue to explore and learn from.

I used to actually think blogging was questionable. That’s why I have dubbed this my “questionable” blogging career. Too many of my peers have started blogs in different niches only to see them dissolve away within a few weeks. At this point, I have to say I really have enjoyed it, and perhaps I am moving passed the questionable phase. Maybe this project is becoming legit?

Time will tell where things will go from here, but I am going to soak this in and enjoy it.

As always, thanks for reading.

Max

HITMC is a community – bound together by a passion for and a love of PR, communications, and marketing in healthcare and Health IT. The central idea behind HITMC is to bring together all the smart, innovative, and hard-working healthcare professionals so that we can learn from each other. We enable this by creating a culture where sharing, mutual respect, and lifting each other up is the norm. The annual HITMC Awards are an embodiment of this ethos. They are meant to celebrate the best individuals and organizations who have elevated healthcare marketing, PR, and communications in the past year. For more information, visit www.hitmc.com/awards.