What makes a health company worth a story in Fierce Healthcare? Not a new feature, not a rebrand and not a funding round on its own. What earns a story is a change in how care is paid for, delivered or regulated, backed by someone who can explain it.
Fierce Healthcare, published by Questex as part of its Fierce Life Sciences and Healthcare group, writes about the business of healthcare. Its readers run hospitals, health plans, physician groups and the companies that sell to them. Its reporters cover payers and insurers, providers and health systems, health technology, policy and regulation, and the finance that ties them together. If you want to know how to get featured in Fierce Healthcare, the first thing to accept is that your pitch has to matter to those readers’ jobs, not to your marketing calendar.
This guide covers the five pitch angles that consistently work, a test you can run on every pitch before sending it and the mechanics of reaching the right reporter.
What Fierce Healthcare reporters are looking for
Start by reading the site the way a reporter would. Fierce Healthcare organizes its coverage around a few beats: providers, payers, health tech, finance, regulatory and AI. Each beat has reporters who follow the same companies, policies and debates week after week. They are building a running picture of their beat, and they want sources who add to it.
That means three things for you. First, reporters care about what is new for the sector, not what is new for your company. A Medicare Advantage policy shift, a large health system’s decision to change its EHR vendor, a payer’s new prior authorization rule or a quarterly earnings result from a major insurer all move the story forward. Second, they care about evidence. Data from claims, contracts, surveys or deployments carries far more weight than a statement. Third, they care about voices. A named executive at a health system or health plan who will speak candidly is worth more to a reporter than a polished vendor quote.
If you want a shortcut for how to get featured in Fierce Healthcare, it is this: pitch what changed for the sector and bring the person who can explain it. We use a simple check on every healthcare pitch, which we call the Three-Lens Test. Read the pitch three times: once as a health system CFO, once as a health plan executive and once as a policy analyst. If it does not matter to at least one of them, it is not ready for Fierce Healthcare. If it matters to two or three, you have a strong pitch.
The five angles that land
The first angle is original data. Reporters at Fierce Healthcare regularly cover surveys, claims analyses and benchmark reports. If you have data nobody else has, such as denial rates across a set of hospitals, prior authorization turnaround by payer, patient wait times or staffing ratios, you have the raw material of a story. Make the method clear: sample size, time period, how the data was collected and what it does not show. A reporter can write about a careful study of 200 hospitals. A vague claim about “our customers” will not survive an editor.
The second angle is a named deal or deployment with consequences. When a health system signs with a new vendor, a payer partners with a care delivery company or a physician group joins a value-based contract, the story is in what changes. How many patients are affected, what the financial terms look like if they can be shared, and what the parties expect to happen. A partnership announcement with no numbers and no named leader is just a press release. One with the health system’s chief operating officer explaining why they made the choice is a story.
The third angle is policy impact. When CMS releases a proposed rule, when Congress moves on a healthcare bill or when a state changes its Medicaid program, Fierce Healthcare’s reporters look for people who can explain what it means in practice. If your organization has a specific, informed view, pitch it quickly and keep it short. Offer a named expert, two or three sentences on what the rule will change and one concrete example. Speed matters here. A sharp comment that arrives the day a rule is released is far more useful than a long one a week later.
The fourth angle is contrarian expertise. Reporters value sources who challenge the consensus with evidence. If everyone is excited about a new care model and you have data showing where it fails, or if a popular AI tool is creating a problem your clinicians have documented, that is worth pitching. Keep the tone measured. The goal is to be the source who sees the second-order effect, not the one who sounds angry.
The fifth angle is people and leadership. Executive moves at large health systems and plans are covered when they signal a shift in strategy. A new chief digital officer at a major system, a payer hiring a well-known clinical leader or a vendor bringing on a former regulator can be a story if you explain what the hire means. A routine appointment at a small company usually is not.
Notice what is missing from the list: product launches on their own. A new feature or product can become part of a story when it is tied to one of the five angles. A launch backed by a named customer and measured results starts to look like the second angle. A tool that responds to a new CMS rule fits the third. Pitched alone, launches rarely make it past the inbox.
Mistakes that get pitches ignored
The fastest way to lose a healthcare reporter is to overstate. Words like “transform,” “first-ever” and “solves” signal a claim the reporter will have to check and likely cannot confirm. Describe what happened and let the reader decide how big it is.
The second mistake is hiding the customer. Many vendors describe results at “a large health system in the Midwest.” Reporters understand why, but an anonymous customer makes the story hard to verify and hard to publish. If the customer will not be named, consider whether the story is ready.
The third is ignoring patient privacy. Never send a reporter anything that could identify a patient, and do not offer patient stories unless the patient has agreed, in writing, to speak. A pitch that treats privacy carelessly tells a reporter you may be a risky source.
The fourth is pitching the wrong title. Fierce Healthcare covers the business of care delivery and coverage. Drug pricing and pharma marketing stories usually belong at Fierce Pharma, and early-stage biotech research at Fierce Biotech. Pitching the right sister title shows you have done the reading.
How to reach the right reporter
Pitch the reporter who covers your beat, not a general news address. Read the last month of coverage in your area and note who wrote it. Reporters’ bylines link to their author pages, and many list their beat and contact preferences. Look for the person who has written about your topic, your competitors or the policy you are commenting on.
Keep the email short. A subject line that states the news in plain terms works best, ideally with a named organization or a number. “New data: prior auth denials up 18% at 120 hospitals” will be opened. “Partnership announcement” will not. In the body, give the news in the first sentence, the evidence in the second and the offer of an interview in the third. Name the person available to talk, with their title, and give a window when they can take a call. Link to supporting material rather than attaching it.
Time-sensitive comment needs a different format. When a rule or major event breaks, send a short note with your expert’s name, their two-sentence take and their availability that day. Many reporters assemble reaction stories quickly, and a usable quote in the first few hours is often what gets included.
Follow up once after a few working days if you have not heard back, and add something new when you do. A new data point, a confirmed interview slot or a reason the story is timely this week gives the reporter a reason to look again. After that, let it rest.
A final tip on embargoes: use them for genuine news with a fixed release time, such as a study publication or a deal announcement, and say so in the subject line. Reporters on busy beats appreciate the extra time to prepare, and a well-handled embargo builds trust for the next one.
Building a relationship that lasts
The organizations that appear in Fierce Healthcare again and again are not the ones that pitch most often. They are the ones that have become useful sources. They send data when they have it, offer expert views when a story breaks and do not push for coverage of every announcement.
You can build that kind of relationship on purpose. Pick two or three reporters whose beats match your expertise. Read their work. When they cover something where you have real insight, send a short note with a specific point, even if it does not lead to a quote. When you have strong news, they will know who you are.
Coverage in Fierce Healthcare does more than reach executives on the day it runs. It becomes part of the public record about your organization, the kind of reputable source that search engines and AI assistants draw on when someone asks about your company or your field. A single well-sourced story can keep surfacing in AI answers for months. That is a strong reason to pitch the stories that deserve coverage, and to hold back the ones that do not.
It also pays to prepare for the interview itself, because a pitch that lands is only the start. Brief your spokesperson on the reporter’s recent stories, the two or three points you want to make and the numbers that support them. Decide in advance what you cannot share, such as contract terms or patient details, and how you will say so. Reporters respect a clear “we cannot disclose that” far more than a vague answer. After the interview, send any promised data the same day. Speed and reliability are a large part of how to get featured in Fierce Healthcare again the next time a related story comes up.
Run your next pitch through the Three-Lens Test before you send it. If a CFO, a health plan executive or a policy analyst would stop and read, you have something worth a reporter’s time.