Memorial Health Systems has rebranded their hospitals.
On Friday, Passavant Area Hospital will have its name changed to Jacksonville Memorial Hospital. CEO Dr. Scott Boston says it’s not the first time the hospital has had a name change: “Originally the hospital in Jacksonville that was started back in the 1870s was called Jacksonville Hospital. It wasn’t until about 25-30 years later that the hospital actually transitioned to Passavant Hospital in honor of Rev. William Passavant, who was a Lutheran minister that was instrumental in getting the hospital established in Jacksonville. Our legal current name is Jacksonville Memorial Area Hospital. We go by the name of Passavant Area Hospital, and that’s how we do business. We’ve had that name for several decades now. It’s a very well established name in our community. However, in 2014, we did make affiliation with Memorial Health Systems at that time. Truly, we became part of Memorial Health System, but we just didn’t change our name at that time.”
Boston says the name change has been in the works for approximately 3 years, and COVID-19 delayed things from moving forward last year. Boston says it transitions the hospital to better reflect the hospital’s membership with Memorial Health System.
Memorial’s 19 physician clinics and ExpressCare locations will also change to MemorialCare.
Boston says the consistency in the naming coincides with the consistency in care across the whole system: “This is a very common trend among large organizations. You really want your brand to be consistent with what you are doing. We are a healthcare organization. We are integrated. We are providing high quality health care. We really want our brand and our logo being consistent with who we are and consistent across the Health Care System. There’s really no change other than the name and the logo. There’s the same quality of care. It’s the same high quality care. The same people providing [the care]. All of that is going to remain the same.”
Boston says by putting Jacksonville in the name, it places the focus directly on the community in which the care is provided. The public will begin to see new signage across the health system in early October. The half-century-old triple cross emblem will be replaced with a new logo featuring 4 red inward arches that will form a diamond-like pattern. A new website will also go online on Friday at memorial.health. A full list of all the entities affected by the name change will be available on the new website on Friday.