How UMass Memorial Health Hits 100 Positive News Stories a Year

Many years ago, a three-year-old girl underwent a complex heart surgery to save her life. She needed a similar procedure at age 21 when she was living in California. After struggling to find the right medical professional in her hometown, she and her mother tracked down the original doctor at UMass Memorial Medical Center. This became a great news story, with TV news crews from Boston flocking to the site.

“It just took off – it received tremendous coverage,” Berry says. Overall, good news stories from the team have been picked by the Boston Globe, Boston Business Journal, and national trade publications. Other stories have appeared in The New York Times and the Wall Street Journal.

These stories are of immediate interest to the news media, and for UMass Memorial Health, they represent the kind of coverage that helps set the organization apart from nearby healthcare providers in Boston. They are stories that might never have gotten the attention they deserve, however, if the UMass Memorial team didn’t demonstrate such sophisticated use of technology from Cision. 

For certain stories with a regional angle, Berry says the team has been able to reach out to specific outlets and reporters. 

“If you don’t know who the players are, you’re not going to be able to successfully pitch those folks,” he says.  

Berry describes himself as a communications professional with “a passion for pitching,” but he recognizes that not everyone has the same zeal. Access to Cision, however, has sparked new interest across UMass Memorial Health. 

In fact, Berry sent an email request to a wide variety of colleagues asking for ideas and received one that proved so good he secured interviews with two outlets. “It only took me an hour,” he says. 

Before using Cision, Berry and his team would typically complied a briefing book for an employee about to be interviewed by the media. Now, however, it’s just a matter of electronically pulling information about a publication, reporter, editorial calendar, or other critical information.

“It saves me time,” he says. “I often work with doctors who are normally too busy to give feedback, but they have shared with me that the briefing book was very helpful.”