Lincoln, NE, Aug. 07, 2017 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Last week, NRC Health published its 10 millionth online patient rating. 

The milestone rating, published at Cleveland Clinic, signals the rapid growth of healthcare transparency nationwide. Since the platform’s inception in 2014, more than 100 healthcare systems nationwide have selected NRC Health as their transparency partner. The service enables healthcare providers to take control of their online reputations, empower patient choice, and build trust with their consumers, by publishing unbiased feedback from verified patients who have recently received care from their organizations.

Andrew Ibbotson, general manager for NRC Health, said, "I want to commend our health system partners for their leadership in ushering in a new era of transparency. This is obviously a major milestone that reinforces our position as market leader. But more importantly, it's a measure of providers’ dedication to serving patients. We are enormously proud to be part of this progress."

With NRC Health's Transparency solution, healthcare organizations can easily aggregate, verify, and publish patient ratings directly to their website and provider profile pages. The Transparency solution captures significantly more feedback – and more accurate ratings – than any other platform. This means that patients see a fuller, more trustworthy account of the care they can expect to receive; and providers benefit from timely and genuine feedback to help improve the way they deliver care to patients.

The Transparency solution is part of a suite of tools that healthcare providers can use to better understand their patients. NRC Health also offers Real-Time Feedback: a survey solution that reaches 100% of patients via text message, email, or phone call, immediately after their care experience. This brings feedback to providers in hours instead of weeks, gives rich details on how they can better serve patients during the next visit, and creates meaningful opportunities for real-time service recovery.

NRC Health’s analysts rigorously screen all patient comments as they come in. Natural Language Processing software performs sentiment analysis to extract and deliver actionable insights from comments. At the same time, trained auditors screen every comment for profanity, libel, or Protected Health Information that could compromise patient confidentiality.

Intermountain Healthcare has the distinction of having published more patient ratings and reviews than any other health system, with the feedback and voices of 518,778 verified patients available on Intermountain.org and their SelectHealth® health plan websites as of today.

Susan DuBois, Assistant Vice President of Physician Relations and Medical Affairs for Intermountain, explained, "We can't overstate the value of these reviews in building patient trust within the communities we serve, and in measuring overall patient experience across the system. NRC’s Transparency solution guides us through an automated feedback-publishing process, which ensures that every patient rating counts and all comments—positive and negative—are published unless they meet a strict set of exclusion criteria.”

Less than one percent of Intermountain patient comments have been suppressed since March 5, 2015. To ensure statistical validity, a minimum of 30 verified ratings are required before a provider’s star rating and patient comments are made available to the public.

NRC Health considers it a privilege to be a part of this process and the broader movement for transparency in healthcare. As more health systems strive to bring clarity to consumers, NRC Health will continue to share insights through its online Healthcare Transparency Resource Center at hctransparency.org.  

About NRC Health

NRC Health (NASDAQ: NRCIA and NRCIB) has helped healthcare organizations illuminate and improve the moments that matter to patients, residents, physicians, nurses, and staff for 35 years. Our empathetic heritage, proprietary methods, and holistic approach enable our partners to better understand the people they care for and, in turn, design experiences that inspire loyalty and trust.

For more information, call 800-388-4264, write to info@nrchealth.com, or visit www.nrchealth.com.

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