Ascension is one of the largest nonprofit and Catholic health systems in the United States, providing care across hospitals, clinics, and physician offices.
For its surgical operations, Ascension's internal technology team was building a digital tool to support communication between doctor's offices and operating room scheduling teams.
Scheduling surgery often requires coordination between multiple people and departments. But the teams involved did not have a dedicated real-time communication channel inside their workflow.
Instead, communication relied on an asynchronous ticketing system.
The challenge: surgical scheduling could not wait for asynchronous communication
Doctor's offices needed a faster way to communicate with the teams responsible for operating room scheduling.
The existing ticketing system allowed teams to exchange information, but it was not designed for real-time conversations. When scheduling questions or issues required immediate clarification, teams had to wait for responses through an asynchronous workflow.
Ascension needed to bring real-time chat directly into its React-based portal while meeting the security and compliance requirements of a large healthcare organization.
But the communication model also presented a more complex challenge than a typical group chat.
When a doctor's office needed help, the conversation was directed to an OR scheduling unit, not to a specific individual.
Someone on that team needed to pick up the conversation and take ownership of it.
Ascension needed a way to:
Let doctor's offices initiate conversations with the appropriate OR scheduling unit
Route those conversations to an available scheduler
Ensure one person takes ownership of a conversation rather than broadcasting it to an entire team
Support different assignment approaches based on availability or workload
Allow doctor's offices to initiate conversations while schedulers respond without needing visibility into thousands of individual office users
Keep all communication within a HIPAA-compliant environment
The solution: real-time chat with intelligent conversation routing
Ascension used CometChat to add real-time messaging directly into its surgical scheduling workflow.
The team built its initial proof of concept using CometChat's React UI Kit, creating a working integration in approximately two days.
The communication model was designed around the structure of Ascension's scheduling teams.
Doctor's offices can identify and start a conversation with the appropriate OR unit rather than needing to search for a specific scheduler.
From there, Ascension can use CometChat's groups, roles, tags, metadata, and presence capabilities to support its own conversation assignment logic.
For example, conversations can be routed based on which schedulers are available or distributed according to workload, allowing the appropriate team member to take ownership of a request.
This creates a more structured workflow than a traditional group chat.
The doctor's office communicates with the scheduling team as a function, while the underlying routing logic determines who should handle the conversation.
Keeping communication aligned with healthcare requirements
Because the conversations take place within a healthcare environment, security and compliance were essential requirements.
Ascension needed a hosted communication solution that could support HIPAA requirements and operate under a Business Associate Agreement.
CometChat provided the communication infrastructure while allowing Ascension to keep the experience embedded within its own portal and workflow.
This meant the team could focus on building the surgical scheduling experience rather than developing the underlying real-time messaging infrastructure from scratch.
From proof of concept to production
The speed of the initial implementation helped Ascension validate the approach early.
Using the React UI Kit, the engineering team was able to build a working proof of concept in roughly two days, including the ability to organize and filter contacts based on OR units and initiate conversations directly from the portal.
Following implementation, Ascension continued developing the communication experience as part of its surgical scheduling tool.
The platform has remained in production use, with the team tracking messaging activity through CometChat's Insights dashboard.
Ascension has also continued its relationship with CometChat through a second year, reflecting the long-term role of real-time communication within the scheduling workflow.
The impact
CometChat gives Ascension a real-time communication layer built around the way surgical scheduling teams actually work.
Real-time communication
Doctor's offices can communicate directly with OR scheduling teams instead of relying entirely on asynchronous tickets.
Smarter conversation routing
Conversations can be assigned to available team members rather than broadcast to an entire scheduling group.
Clear ownership
Individual schedulers can take responsibility for specific conversations and requests.
Communication organized around OR units
Doctor's offices connect with the right scheduling function without needing to identify a specific employee.
Lightweight integration
Ascension built its initial React-based proof of concept in approximately two days.
HIPAA-ready infrastructure
Sensitive healthcare communication can operate within the compliance framework required by the organization.
Embedded in the existing workflow
Communication happens inside Ascension's surgical scheduling portal rather than in a separate application.
For Ascension, the value of chat is not simply faster messaging. It is the ability to turn a slow, asynchronous scheduling workflow into a real-time communication system where requests can reach the right team, be assigned to the right person, and be resolved with clearer ownership.
