Inspiration and validation to make better business decisions

Inspiration and validation to make better business decisions

Bring the voice of your customer into your strategic and operational decision-making right when you need it.

Community Insights deliver actionable insights in just a few weeks, start to finish. Inform your most pressing healthcare business challenges, and identify customer behaviors, needs, expectations, and experiences to enable Human Understanding®.

Our expertise and experience ensure you get results

NRC has helped more than 200 diverse health systems get the insights and voices to support a variety of strategic and operational business challenges facing healthcare leaders. Delivering 2,000+ research studies over 5 years we have built a broad range of research expertise.

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Quality Trusted
Insights

Get the outside-in perspective you need to drive change from a highly engaged target audience.

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Agile Customer
Research

Bring customer insights into your decision-making and design process at any stage.

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Flexible
Study Design

Our healthcare research experts guide you to get the data you really need to move you forward.

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Comprehensive
Research Library

Our experience runs wide with over 200 research study templates available.

Insights on-demand to inform your customer journey design strategies

Answer your most pressing questions when designing your end-to-end customer experience. Check out these use cases.

Customer acquisition

Customer acquisition

Discover likelihood of patients using concierge medicine

PARTNER
335-bed health system striving to be a total care enterprise

RESEARCH OBJECTIVE
Gauge consumer awareness and previous experience with concierge medicine and discover consumer views that differentiate concierge medicine from traditional primary care.

KEY FINDINGS FROM CUSTOMER PANEL

  • Awareness and utilization of concierge medicine are low.
  • 64% are very or somewhat likely to seek more information, with the highest interest in in-person visits with primary care or specialty care doctors (58%).
  • The ability to get same-day primary care provider appointments (55%) was the service consumers were most interested in, with most willing to pay $1,000 or less (46%) out of pocket.

Optimize website search path for care providers

PARTNER
Midwest health system covering 9 regions

RESEARCH OBJECTIVE
Understand consumer processes in seeking care providers considering a new PCP, urgent care, and specialty care.

KEY FINDINGS FROM CUSTOMER PANEL

  • When searching for a new primary care provider, 28% said they first searched to confirm insurance acceptance.
  • When searching for an urgent care location, 53% said they first searched to find an open location.
  • When searching for specialty care, 32% said they first searched for information regarding the specific type of care.

Understanding the role convenience plays in consumer preferences

PARTNER
A region’s largest health system with four hospitals and more than 60 outpatient locations

RESEARCH OBJECTIVE
Discover consumer preferences for extended hours and virtual/tele-visits for medical practices and outpatient services, including preferred days and times.

KEY FINDINGS FROM CUSTOMER PANEL

  • Most prefer morning appointment availability from 7 a.m. to noon. Those under age 55 prefer appointments outside school hours, 7 to 9 a.m., 3 to 7 p.m. and weekends.
  • There’s a frustration with lack of appointment availability and phone system to schedule visits. Several noted the scheduling system, lack of appointments and/or appointment hours is a barrier to care, and they’ve either not received care they need or are considering switching providers.
  • Most consumers are interested in in-person appointments both during and outside of normal business hours with younger being more open to virtual visits.

Clinical experiences

Clinical experiences

Effectiveness of personalized patient content for cancer care journey

PARTNER
A network of private, non-profit hospitals with more than 1,400 beds providing health care services in the Northeast

RESEARCH OBJECTIVE
Learn what information is most important to cancer patients and determine patient satisfaction with content provided.

KEY FINDINGS FROM CUSTOMER PANEL

  • 88% are satisfied with information on scheduling appointments, 87% are satisfied with information on their health issue and how to best contact their provider.

  • Most patients (61%) want information on new breakthroughs
    or treatments.

  • Most patients (64%) prefer to get information in an after-visit summary
    , an email newsletter (54%) or health system website (54%) and 44% are interested in an online health library to learn about cancer and care providers.

  • Most patients (59%) prefer information about treating the whole person
    , not just the cancer (59%) and 58% prefer health and wellness tips for people with cancer.

Assess Emergency Department text message service for patient updates

PARTNER
A southern academic health center with over 60K emergency department visits

RESEARCH OBJECTIVE
Learn if patients and family members find value in a text messaging service for updates, and identify opportunities to improve.

KEY FINDINGS FROM CUSTOMER PANEL

  • 78% lacked awareness of the service up rated text updates as very helpful.
  • Consumers wanted additional features, including info on wait times and what to do if they had questions.

Evaluate effectiveness of admissions packet content

PARTNER
Four acute care hospitals on the eastern seaboard

RESEARCH OBJECTIVE
To engage an NRC Health consumer panel to inform decisions on what to streamline in a hospital admissions packet (over 30 pages).

KEY FINDINGS FROM CUSTOMER PANEL

  • Insights were valuable in demonstrating that the hospital went one way, but patients went another. Armed with the data to show “why,” the hospitals cut from the lengthy list of content to focus on the information the patients wanted.
  • Patients wanted information about costs and the billing process, which was not included. The hospitals will now include information on costs and billing within the admissions packet, including the “No Surprises Act.”

Non-clinical experiences

Non-clinical experiences

Explore and evaluate new payment options

PARTNER
600-bed nonprofit health system in the Midwest

RESEARCH OBJECTIVE
Identify patient perceptions surrounding payment options, and willingness to use new payment methods, including paying for out-of-pocket costs in advance.

KEY FINDINGS FROM CUSTOMER PANEL

  • When asked about tools and technologies they’d like to see, most consumers included improved billing as a priority.
  • 2/3 of the panel did not know whether they could make payments through MyChart.
  • 26% said they were willing to pay through PayPal.
  • 40% said they were very or somewhat unlikely to pay before an appointment.

Chart mobile clinic needs and preferences for underserved families

PARTNER
Pediatric health care system serving multiple counties

RESEARCH OBJECTIVE
Gauge the community’s needs for a mobile clinic and determine motivating factors around usage and optimizing the clinic for family use.

KEY FINDINGS FROM CUSTOMER PANEL

  • 60% of respondents are very or somewhat likely to utilize the mobile clinic.
  • The top areas for additional education, support, and care include mental and physical wellness.
  • 52% said weekend programs and after-school hours (46%) would improve participation.

Understand consumer engagement with podcasts

PARTNER
A Midwest health system with 7 hospitals and over 30 clinics

RESEARCH OBJECTIVE
Gain a better understanding of how consumers engage with podcasts to decide whether to pursue a health system podcast.

KEY FINDINGS FROM CUSTOMER PANEL

  • 55% said they were likely to listen to a podcast produced by the health system based on the podcast being educational, focused on local healthcare, and relevant to personal health issues.
  • They are most interested in content pertaining to general health/wellness tips (71%), nutrition/diet tips (70%), the latest advancements in healthcare (69%) and preventative health care information (66%).
  • Tailor communication and access by age group.

How it works

Our healthcare research expertise, processes, and digital tools to gain insights support the agile outside-in perspective you need to drive change. Bring us your challenge.

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Design

Co-design your study aligned to your business challenge. 

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Listen

Engage the right panel to capture digital insights.

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Analyze

Evaluate and deliver results to inform your strategic decisions.