Health Tech

7 Pet Peeves of a Healthcare Tech Reporter

Healthcare journalists source a significant amount of the stories they write from emailed pitches. To make the media relations process more fruitful for everyone involved, I laid out my top seven pet peeves as a healthcare technology reporter so public relations representatives have a better understanding of which behavior to avoid.

By Katie Adams on December 19, 2022

As a journalist covering healthcare technology, I receive hundreds of pitches from public relations professionals each week — some useful, most not.

Don’t get me wrong — I’m not wholly annoyed about the state of my inbox. There have been many times in which my correspondence with a company and its communications team is seamless, and I’m able to quickly produce an informative and complete article. Other times, the experience can be frustrating.

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To reduce this frustration and make our interaction more fruitful, I’ve laid out my top seven pet peeves as a healthcare technology reporter.

  1. Ditch the buzzwords. As mentioned above, I receive pitches from hundreds of different companies each week. I’ve seen rampant use of terms like “uniquely innovative” or startups claiming they’re “reimagining” the way care is delivered. Words and phrases like this don’t hold much meaning and they don’t make a company stand out. In fact, this wording often makes companies’ pitches blend into the sea of other emails. I recommend being as specific as possible.
  2. Be clear about what the news is. I get it — you want your client company to be covered in MedCity News so you send me an email summarizing the technology. But understand that if your pitch is not tied to a news hook — a fundraising round, new partnership, new customer or anything that is newsworthy — coverage is not guaranteed. So when you send an email, explain why I should be covering a certain company now.
  3. Ensure execs are available. When an interesting pitch comes my way, I get a flutter of excitement. At that moment, I am assuming that pitch means executives are available to be interviewed in a couple of days. Otherwise why bother pitching, right? That excitement turns to frustration when the communications professional tells me the company’s CEO won’t be available to participate in a phone interview or answer questions via email for a week. Journalists are usually working on tight deadlines, and we want to cover news close to when it breaks.
  4. Don’t ignore my questions. You want coverage. I want questions answered. And all of them, not just a select few. For example, a PR representative recently reached out to me about a company Series C funding round. I sent over 12 questions for the CEO to answer, but only got back five responses. When I asked why, the representative told me the executive preferred to “only answer questions related to the company and its tech.” How questions like “describe your business model” and “explain the upcoming clinical trial for your product” aren’t related to the company and its tech, I’ll never know.
  5. Be ready to share data. Companies love to reach out with statistics proving how great their product is, often claiming things like “reduces burnout by 75%” or “saves hospitals $5 million annually.” But when I press for the actual metrics used to get to these conclusions, it’s often a battle. How do they measure burnout? Which areas of the hospital saw the savings — the hospital ER, in the back office administration, in clinical documentation?
  6. Endless follow-ups won’t get me to cover your announcement. As I’ve mentioned, my inbox can become messy at times. A follow-up message, or even two, is welcome and often necessary. But sometimes PR representatives send six or seven follow-ups, which is overkill. And as I said in No. 3, journalists usually want to cover news close to when it breaks, so the news is likely stale by the third or fourth follow-up.
  7. Try to learn journalists’ beats. If you want your pitches to reach the right reporter, it’s worthwhile to learn about their beat. For example, MedCity News has a dedicated reporter for employer and payer-focused news, so I’m usually not writing stories about those subjects unless she’s on vacation. The reverse is also true. So if you are looking for your pitches to not end up in a black hole, please direct it at the right reporter. 

Photo: Flickr user Guillaume Delebarre