Gundersen Health

The Client

Gundersen Health System is where caring meets excellence through a comprehensive health network of wholly owned and affiliated services. It's where nationally recognized quality meets dedicated, compassionate professionals caring for patients in all stages of life.

The Situation

The digital landscape continues to quickly expand, encompassing every facet of consumers’ lives. And with rapid expansion comes fierce competition. Habituated by digital-first natives, consumers expect online experiences to be easy, intuitive, and personalized. Gundersen Health understood that the healthcare industry is not exempt from facing the impact of these forces. 

As a result, Gundersen Health aimed to create a welcoming, seamless experience that captured its brand identity as an elite medical provider with a neighborhood vibe. 

The Challenge

While a potential patient’s aim might be to simply find a primary care physician nearby, the search process on a health system’s site is often cumbersome and time-consuming. Gundersen recognized that a patient’s digital experience is part of their care journey, so their initial contact needs to be supportive, empathetic, and positive.

Gundersen wanted a long-term solution to address this challenge. They aimed to build a digital front door that unified its disparate experiences into a single, cohesive access point. The organization was seeking a digital experience platform (DXP) to serve as the foundation of a great self-service experience and offer a scalable solution that eliminated the manual entry of physician profiles and location information. 

The Solution

Gundersen partnered with Phase2, and the teams built a Drupal platform, migrated the existing content, and integrated with Kyruus, a smart search engine that pulls in data sources and creates a searchable provider directory that can be linked up with an electronic health record (EHR) for open scheduling. Phase2 architected an open source design system to express Gundersen's unique brand identity, including typography, iconography, color, and layout. The new DXP and design system work in tandem, allowing the Gundersen team to independently create their brand-safe content and disseminate it quickly and easily.

In November of 2022, Gundersen Health System and Bellin Health completed a merger of equals and combined operations. Gundersen and Bellin's marketing teams used Acquia DAM for the initial implementation of unifying digital assets. By having a central brand asset hub, Gundersen and Bellim could share or filter out the appropriate categories for each region they cover with consistency.

The Results

Gundersen Health now has the tools and foundation for the future — one that paves the way to accomplishing big initiatives, achieving a more ambitious digital experience for their community, and realizing its love and medicine ideals. Gundersen Health’s digital front door initiative has:

• Resulted in a new platform and user experience to compete in the crowded health system landscape
• Provided an easily extensible site that can grow with future needs
• Eased the consumer experience through a unified access point — to ultimately improve the health of their community