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TWST: What is National Research?
Mr. Beans: National Research was founded 25 years ago. NRC is how it is referred
to quite often. NRC has focused on the information needs of the healthcare
industry. The company's primary types of information or services have been
improvement in education tools and ongoing survey-based performance measurements
and analysis to the health care industry in both the United States and Canada.
We try to address the needs of the healthcare providers and payers to help
measure the care outcomes. In those areas, it would specifically be the
patient's experience or the health status of patients and members. We focus on
developing tools that enable these healthcare organizations to improve their
performance over time.
In recent times, during 2006, we purchased a company called The Governance
Institute, out of San Diego, which is a little different for us historically.
They focus on Board issues for hospitals. The Governance Institute provides
knowledge and solutions necessary for Board members and executive managements of
hospitals and health plans. There are over 450 members of The Governance
Institute, which we did purchase. A year ago, in September 2005, we reentered
the health plan market by buying a company, Geriatric Health Systems, to provide
a platform for reentering back into the health plan arena. TWST: What do you consider to be the competitive landscape, the marketplace, and
their dynamics? What differentiates National Research?
Mr. Beans: I think the major differentiation would be the improvement and
educational tools that we provide and the ease of the survey work that we do as
compared to a number of our competitors. We were one of the first to move away
from static-type surveys to more dynamic-type surveys. But I think that our
competitive advantage is really the way we provide information back to our
clients with our tools that enable them to work on improvement processes within
their organization.
It's a pretty fragmented market. There are four or five of us in this niche
nationally, but then once you get to those, there is a local research
organization in every state and probably every major city, which becomes our
competitor.
Tickers included in this excerpt: NRCI
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