How this Chicago health publisher is seeing more views than WebMd

They say slow and steady wins the race, but there’s a reserve of other s-word superlatives that help along the way. Smart. Selective. Supportive. Savvy. Veritas Health, a Deerfield-based publisher of health-related online content, wears each of them well.

Written by Sam Dewey
Published on Aug. 14, 2015
How this Chicago health publisher is seeing more views than WebMd

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They say slow and steady wins the race, but there’s a reserve of other s-word superlatives that help along the way.

Smart. Selective. Supportive. Savvy.

Veritas Health, a Deerfield-based publisher of health-related online content, wears each of them well.

The company, which operates four health sites (spine-health.com, arthritis-health.com, sports-health.com, and osteoporosis-health.com) has become the largest musculoskeletal site in the world, with nearly 20 million cumulative page views a month. One of their sites recently beat out even the fiercest of competitors in WebMD and Mayo Clinic, according to Alexa.

“Our foundational tenet is to put patients first in everything we do,” said Veritas Health CEO and founder Stephanie Burke. “This commitment is most important and obvious when it comes to the content we publish.”

Putting your chips on the tortoise

Founded in 1999, Veritas’ road to success is perhaps the epitome of the fabled tortoise and the hare. Their growth has been at once thoughtful and intentional, focused and informed.

At their core, they’ve homed in on a few basic mantras: put the patient first, write higher-quality content than anyone else in town, and do it all exceptionally well.  

That razor-sharp focus has led them well.

Over the years, the company has amassed a 150-strong consortium of physician contributors, who ensure that Veritas provides the most accurate, balanced, and comprehensive patient education materials around.

Veritas’ patient-friendly, peer-reviewed articles and videos work in tandem with the medical community, with over 100 hospitals and healthcare clinics supporting the site and many practitioners referring their patients directly to the site.

“In consumer health, high-level content is readily available,” said Burke. “But if you have a serious health issue or you're in a lot of pain, you need in-depth information — fully reliable, comprehensive, and noncommercial information. If you're a doctor you get this level of information from medical journals. If you're a patient, you can get this level of trusted information from the peer-reviewed information on Veritas Health websites.”

After establishing a foundation of consistent reliability and trust, Veritas expanded to other mediums. They now author high-quality content in any number of formats so that their readers always have accessible health information at hand, from mobile and tablet to print, newsletters, and videos — and they’re translating it all into Spanish, too.

Four books, 50 videos, and 10 Telly awards later, they’ve emerged as one of the nation’s leading healthcare publishers.

Today, they’re experiencing exponential growth. They doubled both traffic and the number of sites at their command, and brought on nine new members to their all-star team.

And they’re looking to hire more.

When it comes down to it, it seems Veritas successes today rest upon the slow, steady, and indomitable work of yesterday.

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