Deaconess Health System

Transforming Customer Access with Intelligent Global Search and Online Scheduling

Client: Deaconess Health Systems Industry: Healthcare Project Focus: Modernization, User Interaction, Hot Pockets

Overview

The organization set out to modernize its Find-a-Doctor experience and significantly improve its global search capabilities. The objective was clear: increase usage, remove friction, and make it dramatically easier for patients to find and book care.

We redesigned the search experience to deliver faster, more relevant results, helping users quickly identify providers who meet their needs, including those accepting new patients. We then extended the experience by integrating online scheduling directly into search results.

Patients can now find a provider that meets their needs or specialties, click the next available open time slot, and immediately book care all within a single, seamless workflow.

The result is a streamlined path from discovery to appointment, reducing drop-off, increasing engagement, and improving access to care.

The Challenge

The existing search and Find-a-Doctor experiences were built within a legacy Kentico CMS environment and relied on a traditional, monolithic search model. Both tools were limited in scope and flexibility. The online scheduling was a legacy application that required a lot of "clicks" from a user to navigate increasing friction for appointment registration.

The global search experience consisted of a single search input and results page that aggregated all content types together, often making it difficult for users to quickly locate the most relevant information.

Similarly, the original Find-a-Doctor tool was constrained. Patients could search for a physician by name, but could not filter by specialty, availability, geographic location, or languages spoken — all critical factors in healthcare decision-making.

Key challenges included:

Introducing a modern React-based frontend within a tightly coupled legacy Kentico environment
Re-architecting search to support structured filtering across multiple provider attributes
Tuning search relevance to surface accurate, timely, and meaningful results
Coordinating data across multiple systems to ensure consistency
Reducing friction between provider discovery and appointment booking
Introducing a modern experience while still providing support for users on older devices and browsers

The organization needed a solution that modernized the experience without destabilizing the broader enterprise platform.

The Solution

We rebuilt the global search and Find-a-Doctor experiences as modern, high-performance React applications powered by Algolia, while maintaining seamless integration with the existing Kentico and .NET backend environment.

The new search architecture supports structured filtering across specialties, availability, geography, languages, and provider names, delivering faster, more relevant results tailored to how patients actually search for care.

Provider profiles were enhanced with integrated star ratings from Clockwise and real-time appointment availability through Epic's scheduling APIs. Most importantly, we embedded online scheduling directly into the discovery workflow. Patients can now find a provider accepting new patients, click the next desired time slot, and move directly into booking, dramatically reducing the number of steps between search and confirmed visit.

The result is a streamlined, modern experience that connects provider discovery and scheduling into a single, intuitive journey.

Solution Benefits

The modernized search and scheduling experience delivered measurable improvements across patient access, engagement, and operational efficiency:

Higher Appointment Conversion Rates Embedding online scheduling directly within the Find-a-Doctor workflow significantly reduced friction between discovery and booking. Fewer clicks increased the likelihood that users complete the scheduling process.
Faster, Easier Access to Care Patients can now filter providers by specialty, availability, geographic location, and languages spoken, making it dramatically easier to find the right provider and act immediately. The experience aligns with how users naturally search for healthcare.
More Relevant and Accurate Search Results Structured indexing and relevance tuning through Algolia ensure users see the most pertinent and up-to-date provider information. Results are driven by meaningful attributes rather than basic keyword matching, improving trust and usability.
Real-Time Availability Through Epic Integration Integration with Epic's scheduling APIs provides accurate, current appointment data. This eliminates outdated availability information and reduces reliance on call centers for booking.
Modern User Experience Within a Legacy Platform A React-based frontend was successfully introduced into a Kentico and .NET Framework 4.8 environment without requiring a full CMS replacement. This delivered a modern digital experience while preserving enterprise stability.
Improved Provider Visibility and Engagement Enhanced provider profiles, including star ratings from Clockwise and structured search filters, make it easier for patients to evaluate and select providers, increasing interaction with key service lines.
A Scalable Digital Access Foundation The decoupled architecture creates a flexible framework for future enhancements, including personalization, expanded filters, analytics optimization, and additional self-service capabilities.

Results

The redesigned Deaconess global search and Find-a-Doctor experience streamlined the path from provider discovery to confirmed appointment.

By combining intelligent search, real-time availability, and embedded online scheduling, patients can now move from search to booking in just a few intuitive steps — significantly reducing friction compared to the previous process.

The impact included:

Increased usage of the Find-a-Doctor tool
Higher online scheduling engagement
Reduced drop-off between search and booking
Improved visibility into provider availability

At the same time, the organization modernized a critical digital access point without replacing its CMS or backend systems, proving that meaningful patient experience improvements can be achieved within a legacy enterprise environment.

About Our Approach

This initiative required more than a user interface refresh — it demanded a thoughtfully engineered architecture that could operate within a legacy enterprise ecosystem while delivering modern performance and flexibility.

Modern Frontend, Stable Backend

We implemented a React-based frontend integrated directly into the existing Kentico and .NET Framework 4.8 environment. Custom .NET services were developed to extract and structure content from Kentico, enabling a clean separation between presentation and content management.

The build pipeline was optimized for performance, including asset minification and legacy browser support to ensure broad accessibility without compromising speed.

Intelligent Search Architecture

Search functionality was powered by Algolia and supported by a structured indexing system designed for reliability and efficiency.

A scheduled indexing service:

Extracts structured provider and content data from the database
Scans relevant site content
Transforms records into optimized Algolia-ready formats
Publishes updates on a controlled schedule

To manage operational costs and improve efficiency, we implemented differential hashing to detect record changes and prevent unnecessary write operations to Algolia.

Purpose-Built Index Design

Search was intentionally segmented across dedicated indices, including a specialized Find-a-Doctor index designed to support advanced faceting and filtering.

Provider records were enriched with structured attributes such as:

Specialty
New patient acceptance
Languages spoken
Clinic affiliations and location data

The experience supports both attribute-based filtering and proximity search, allowing users to enter an address and locate providers nearby — while still prioritizing the most common decision drivers, such as specialty and availability.

Real-Time Integration Layer

The frontend integrates directly with:

Algolia for high-performance search
Clockwise for provider ratings
Epic APIs for real-time appointment availability and scheduling

This integration architecture ensures that provider discovery, credibility signals, and booking functionality operate as a cohesive digital workflow.