This article describes how results are returned when searching for care.

Before searching, you must select a valid location and plan/product to determine which providers and costs are available to be returned in the search results. Automatic location and plan selection for authenticated members is supported.

Users can search within a particular category or conduct a free text search. A category based search only returns results in the selected category. Depending on the search term, a free text search may return results in a single most-likely category or may return results across multiple categories.

Provider and location search results include results relevant to the search terms.  Providers with primary keyword mappings (highly relevant to the search terms) are prioritized higher in the results.  Secondary mappings (still relevant, but less so) are prioritized next within the results. When a user searches for a provider by name, exact name matches are prioritized higher in the results with partial name matches following.

Cost search results include providers at locations that perform the service for which the user searched based on the assignment of relevant cost values to the provider.  By default, they are sorted by cost, low to high.

There are several features that can be used to drive members to high quality, low cost providers.  These features can be customized based on your organization’s business rules and include:

• Tiered Networks
• Recommended Results
• Value Added Programs
• Promoted Providers (Smart Search)

Given a group of equally clinically relevant providers or locations, these features can be configured to return results that are specific and prioritized to a provider’s coverage level and a member’s plan details.  

Within a group of equally relevant results, a boost can be added to providers that are available to book appointments online and prioritize  those providers higher in the results set.

Within a group of equally relevant providers in the search results, the providers are sorted first by distance and then by name. More than one group of equally relevant providers can be delivered in a single search results set.

Providers for whom you do not have a physical address will be shown in a separate tab on the search results page from those with a physical address.