WordPress Development and Staff Augmentation | Samaritan Health Services

Samaritan Health Services Revamps Digital Presence with Seamless Migration to WordPress

Samaritan Health Services is a non-for-profit regional health system that includes a network of hospitals, providers, and medical clinics and serves over 250,000 residents across Oregon. The organization also operates Samaritan Health Plans, a program that provides insurance products to service the healthcare needs of individuals, employer groups, and Medicare/Medicaid enrollees.

Challenges

Samaritan Health Services faced several challenges with its existing platform. The system was complicated and underutilized, failing to leverage its key features. The organization sought a more user-friendly content management system (CMS) that did not require IT assistance for regular updates. High maintenance costs for ongoing app development, server maintenance, and patching were also a concern. Additionally, the need to upgrade its platform version was becoming cumbersome. The primary goals were to decrease the total cost of ownership, move from .NET MVC to a headless CMS for a better user experience, and achieve content authoring and marketing flexibility for over 50 users.

Project

Platform

WordPress

Industry

Healthcare

Expertise

Samaritan Health Services website on devices, demonstrating success with WordPress web development agency services

Solutions

Samaritan Health Services, a long-time customer of Americaneagle.com, turned to its trusted website agency for assistance. Given Americaneagle.com's expertise with both the existing platform and platform it sought to migrate to, WordPress, the partnership made sense. Although the Samaritan Health team wanted to handle the development themselves, its unfamiliarity with WordPress led to a staff augmentation agreement. Americaneagle.com provided a dedicated team that laid out the structure of the new site, taught best practices, and assisted with active development.

The entire website was migrated to WordPress and included a multi-site solution: www.samhealth.org and www.samhealthplans.org, available in both English and Spanish. This platform proved to be easier to update, required less maintenance, and was more cost-effective for licensing and hosting.

The project involved several key steps. Americaneagle.com and Samaritan Health Services collaborated closely, with Americaneagle.com providing a structured approach to the new site. The dedicated team from Americaneagle.com worked on creating a library of custom WordPress blocks and patterns that could be seamlessly used across the different websites (for both English and Spanish). One theme powered all four websites, controlling the different styles and color variations. The project also incorporated a mix of core and custom blocks, enabling Samaritan Health to manage nearly every aspect of its content.

The migrated functionalities included critical features such as Find a Doctor, Find a Location, Find a Drug, Services, Events, Shop Health Plans, News, Blogs, Videos, Content Pages, Contact Forms, and Global Search. The new website is hosted on WP Engine.

The migration to WordPress and the redesign of the Samaritan Health website marked a significant improvement in the healthcare organization’s digital presence. The new CMS provided the Samaritan Health team with the flexibility and ease of use they sought, allowing over 50 content authors to work efficiently without needing IT support. The reduction in maintenance costs and the streamlined update process led to a decrease in the total cost of ownership. Additionally, the new headless CMS architecture enhances the user experience, providing a more responsive and dynamic interface.