Black Book Market Research

Eight hundred forty hospitals and inpatient organizations and fifteen hundred fifteen physician practices were represented in the sweeping Q1-Q2 2021 series of financial management IT user polls, as daunting challenges are forcing providers to advance their technologies to maintain solvency.

Cerner is recognized as the top-rated inpatient EHR vendor for integrated hospitals and health delivery systems for the second consecutive year in ratings gathered exclusively from departmental clinical, financial, medical, and IT/operational staff members of hospitals, clinics and ancillaries providers. Cerner also was honored with the highest client experience scores in major Academic Medical Center health systems and affiliated providers in 2021, as in 2020.

Awareness of behavioral health IT benefits shaped by the surging volume of patients seeking services for mental disorders, telehealth, and the rising social acceptance of mental health issues are augmenting meteoric industry growth

Across the full post-acute continuum, Netsmart consistently outperforms as the top-rated HIT platform in the outpatient settings for the seventh consecutive year.

With complex claims denials increased over 300 percent since 2015, nine in ten providers are turning the complicated complex claims processing to highly adept external vendors. Argos Health receives top client experience ratings in annual polling of chief financial officers and senior business officers in provider organizations as hospital margins continue to diminish.

Survey results from 1,382 physicians, clinicians, and administrative staff rate Surgical Information Systems (SIS) first among Ambulatory Surgical Center EHR vendors for sixth consecutive year. Surgical Information Systems achieved top ratings in nine of the 18 key performance indicators focused on vendors delivering perioperative IT to ambulatory surgery centers (ASCs) and hospitals' outpatient facilities.

Eight in 10 independent physician specialty practices have affirmed their confidence in specialty-distinctive electronic health record systems and robust multi-use EHRs with well-constructed specialty modules, as the more detailed aspects of fourth generation usability come into play and provider connectivity issues persist. Eleven percent of specialists seek to end chronic system replacements with flexible cloud-based and specialty-driven EHRs tailored to improve financial, workflow, clinical outcomes and satisfaction.

The health IT arm of the Department of Health and Human Services charged with coordination of nationwide efforts to implement and utilize the most advanced health information technology and electronic exchange of health information, has both providers and payers anticipating major ONC population health initiatives and government-led motivations ahead.

Medical and health system technology advisory practices remained among the least impacted, holding up better than other global management consulting industries, although a 13.9% contraction year-on-year is indicated for CY 2020.

Seventy-three percent of health system, hospital and physician organizations report their infrastructures are unprepared to respond. The survey results estimated 1500 healthcare providers are vulnerable to data breaches of 500 or more records, representing a three hundred percent increase over this year.

Hospital system and physician organizations ranked cybersecurity firms by industry client satisfaction and loyalty scores via independent key performance indicators.

Nuance maintains the highest industry client satisfaction ranking for informatics in the evolving enterprise-wide software market for front, middle and end coding & clinical document processes.

Growth in clinical documentation market is expected to reach US$5.3B by 2022 from $3.2B 2018 with a 10.3% CAGR driven by mid-RCM artificial intelligence supported solutions to reduce costs, manage unstructured data and check for billing and coding losses.

HR outsourcing in hospitals and physician groups has matured. Whether it's payroll, recruitment, data analytics or other overly stressed HR functions, a data-rich automated service underpinned by artificial intelligence is the key to successful HR transformation.

Two of three consumers revealed they will consider changing their physician and hospital providers in the coming year after learning how their health record was not shareable or available or was blocked in the past year

The industry-wide movement of radical IT housecleaning identifies gaps, redundancies, and conflicts in financial digital transformations.