Telecare Aware, like other media outlets, looks for the news in any announcement. The news here is in our purview, and of interest to our readers, but it could have been far more so. What is Consult A Doctor doing with their end of the partnership? How are these companies doing in membership and other partnerships? Is this ground-breaking or first-ever? But what we get is what we call ‘padding’ and ‘borrowed interest’. For instance, there’s ’36 million Americans who are being treated via Telemedicine’–depending on how you define ‘telemedicine’, which I doubt is what we in the industry understand. Datamonitor and others have defined a close to $8 billion market for telehealth–by the way, that’s in 2012. Second paragraph goes into a disquisition on AMA stats, such as 70% of doctor visits are for information only–what does that have to do with this? Third paragraph, direct quote from the CEO of Connectyx–it ‘will help millions of Americans save time and money during this Health Care Crisis’? Really? How?
When the company descriptions are longer than the actual release, even with padding, that’s not good. In other words, this release is a tossed salad of factoids. Writers like steak. If your company needs directions to the grill, Steve’s ‘Six Steps to Press Release Happiness’ is still available as a PDF. [Not intended as shameless plug, but after this it’s only right to offer a solution. Donna]