2017 Small Cap Awards

4 US BUSINESS NEWS / 2017 Small Cap Awards , Best Market Research Firm 2018 & Award for Excellence in Opinion Mining Black Book is the premier provider of competitive intelligence, market research, opinion mining, sentiment analysis, services evaluation and strategic consulting services to Fortune 2000 companies worldwide. We profile the firm to find out more about the extraordinary success it has achieved since inception. Since 2002, Black Book has been recognized as a Top 25 international market research niche firm, specializing in the technology, healthcare, pharmaceutical, procurement, higher education, finance and business services sectors. The firm has served over 12,000 clients including all of the nation’s top 100 financial institutions, 300 largest hospitals, 50 top insurers, 100 top universities, and the world’s 400 largest technology firms. As such it has earned itself a reputation for extreme accuracy and enthusiastic customer service which keeps its clients requesting Black Book’s services year after year. This reputation for being the only unbiased, independent source for competitive intelligence, where product and services vendors cannot pre-purchase or acquire analysis reviews from the Analyst or Research firm, has led to Black Book experiencing a 750% growth in the past three years. Specialising in the healthcare market, Black Book has drawn on its vast experience in the sector to ensure ongoing excellence for its clients. A large segment of Black Book resources are devoted to health care technology and services client experience polling and research. In addition to serving health care organizations and associations with their research needs regarding patient satisfaction, physician performance, and service development opportunities, the company also serves national health care consultants to government, media and financial/ investment agencies. Recently, within the healthcare space, Black Book released research which indicated the majority of healthcare provider and payer organizations are not taking cybersecurity seriously enough. Responses included 323 strategic decision makers from the US. The findings, from the firm’s Q4 2017 survey, found that more than eight in ten provider organizations lack a reliable enterprise leader for cybersecurity, while only 11 percent plan to get a cybersecurity officer in 2018. When it comes to payers, 31 percent have an established manager for cybersecurity programs currently, with 44 percent planning to recruit a candidate in the new year. The survey also advised on the hesitation of healthcare provider organizations in adopting the best practices for cybersecurity. Fifty-four percent of respondents admitted they do not conduct regular risk assessments, while 39 percent do not carry out regular penetration testing on their firewalls. Another key piece of research the firm has recently provided to the healthcare market is its 2017 Revenue Cycle Management surveys, deployed from a research study designed to trend consumer satisfaction and patient experiences, as well as uncover payment challenges and strategies for healthcare provider organizations. According to the research, 83 percent of those surveyed providers plan to meet the rise in patient consumerism with more retail-like technology solutions and practices. As part of this piece of research, Black Book conducted two sets of focused polls in Q2-Q3 2017 with both patients and providers. Consumer panel surveys aimed to determine how patient responsibility for medical costs, which shifted from employers to patients, is impacting uncollected provider revenue. The company found that since 2015, patients have experienced a 29.4 percent increase in both deductible and out-of-pocket maximum costs, with an average deductible for consumers this year averaging $1820 and out-of-pocket costs rising to over $4400. The combined surveys included 2,698 providers and a focused group of 850 healthcare consumers with high deductible health plans. Survey findings from 1,595 physician practices, 202 hospitals and 49 health systems reveal profit margins continue to be impacted negatively by traditional collection solutions, steering 82 percent of medical providers and 92 percent of hospitals to jettison time- intensive, error-prone, manual efforts to back end process and reconcile bills by Q4 2018. With millions of dollars of unpaid medical bills, many providers are instituting new processes and technologies to recover the monies owed them. It is findings such as these that keep the key thought leaders within the healthcare industry at the forefront of the latest market developments and able to make key decisions for their companies. SCA17006