The island’s signature hospital system undergoes a complete rebranding, making the transition to North well Health

by Jessica Jones-Gorman • Photos by Amessé Photography

Eighteen years after an historic merger merged the North Shore Health System and Long Island Jewish Medical Center, creating North Shore-LIJ, the entire healthcare organization recently began a complete rebranding process aimed at building better recognition. As Staten Island University Hospital and the system’s 20 other outposts make the transition to North well Health this year, the system’s main goal is to distinguish itself in a cluttered market.

“Much of what we do is really an untold story,” noted Ramon Soto, North well Health’s chief marketing and communications officer. “We have 61,000 employees across 21 hospitals and remain one of the largest private employers in New York State with a staff of more than 15,000 nurses and 13,000 physicians. We also maintain a world-class and pioneering research team that employs 2,200 full-time researchers, and founded the state’s first new medical school in 40 years. Yet many are unaware of the depth and breadth of services the hospital system offers.”

Part of the problem, Soto explained, has been the North Shore-LIJ name which, according to hospital research, has proven to be confusing to consumers, the news media, and medical professionals and even with its employees. The goal, then, was to develop a powerful brand vision that resonated with the public.

“North Shore-LIJ is our flagship, but it is only representative of two of the hospitals in the system,” Soto said. “It doesn’t give us the platform we need to tell our broader story. More recently, we also saw a number of our competitors shouting loudly their value and name in the marketplace, so the idea of telling our story started to pick up speed.”

So, in September, the North Shore-LIJ board of trustees unanimously approved the name change to North well Health, a nod to both the organization’s past and future.

“We started with no less than 600 names, which were eventually winnowed down to a core of 15,” Soto said with a smile. “We then did a whole host of consumer testing and found with north well, two words were representative of one brand and one concept. ‘North’ was a wonderful nod to our past and ‘Well’ is a designation of our future. We think the destiny of good healthcare is keeping more patients out of the hospital by building more ambulatory sites and treating individuals in the most efficient way possible with the most convenience.”

The new North wellHealth name will be the centerpiece of a broad rebranding and marketing campaign that will continue well beyond 2016, the beginning of a multi-year process to build recognition. In 2015, the health system began working with branding consultants Monigle and Interbrand to develop a new company name and brand platform. In addition, the marketing communications firm J. Walter Thompson was brought in to develop a broad communications program.

According to Soto, one of the most important and enduring aspects of the rebranding is that the names of each of the organization’s 21 hospitals will remain unchanged, in recognition of their rich and unique community based histories.

“Staten Island University Hospital, like all of our hospitals, has such a wonderful local story,” Soto said. “It was born in the 1860s and has serviced the community through more than a century of advancements. We like to think that this rebranding will complement that local story; reinforcing what this system stands for as well as its philosophy of innovation.”

Donna Proske, executive director of SIUH, agreed.

“I think the rebranding gives us an opportunity to share with the local community that we have been and continue to be part of a large powerful organization,” Proske said. “This system brings tremendous resources to our community, and we are able to share in the positive trends of our sister hospitals. If we see that one site is functioning at a high level in an area where another might be struggling, for example, we can align with that hospital and study what they’re doing differently. That way, our strengths are shared throughout.”

There’s also the benefit of a synergistic relationship with The Feinstein Institute for Medical Research, which was founded in 1995 to house the hospital system’s research operations. The National Institutes of Health ranks the Institute among the top 10 percent of grant-receiving research centers in the nation. The hospital also shares an affiliation with Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, which studies the genetic origins of cancer and the drugs to cure it.

“We want to make it more clear to the public what this hospital system has to offer,” Proske said. “The title North Shore LIJ didn’t mean much to our community, but I think the name Northwell really more closely demonstrates what we have become.”

Proske stressed that there will be no changes to either SIUH campus—that the hospital will continue to serve borough residents with no interruption to services at either site.

“I think it’s important to stress how beneficial it is to Staten Islanders to have two convenient locations here in this borough,” Proske said. “Last year, about 125,000 patients came through our emergency departments, and we had about 35,000 inpatient discharges and approximately 7,000 surgeries. There were another 16,000 ambulatory surgery cases and almost 3,000 births. That accounts for 61 percent of all hospital inpatient care for the borough.”

“Being highly visible and clearly understood within and beyond the New York metropolitan area requires strong brand recognition,” concluded Michael J. Dowling, the 21-hospital network’s president and chief executive officer. “The Northwell name is unique, simple, and approachable, and just better defines who we are and where we are going.”

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