The latest hospital system to rebrand, puts health front and center

NYU Langone Medical Center, which has been expanding in recent years, is the latest health system in the area to outgrow its name. NYU Langone Health will serve as the new umbrella and logo for NYU Langone's hospitals and outpatient centers starting Thursday. Name changes are also planned at core facilities, including NYU Lutheran Medical Center in Brooklyn, whose moniker will no longer invoke its religious origins.

"The concept in choosing the name 'health' was to create this aspirational branding," said Debbie Cohn, assistant vice president of marketing at NYU Langone. "Our end goal is the health of our patients and prospective patients in the communities we serve."

The move follows similar rebranding efforts at Northwell Health and NYC Health + Hospitals, which have sought to create systemwide identities in periods of rapid change.

At NYU Langone, the decision to rebrand was sparked by the merger with NYU Lutheran Medical Center, said Kathy Lewis, senior vice president for communications and marketing at NYU Langone.

"It just became confusing," said Lewis. "There was a conversation about 'How do we better represent our brand."

NYU Lutheran, founded by Sister Elisabeth Fedde in 1883 as Norwegian Lutheran Deaconess Home and Hospital, will now go by NYU Langone Hospital-Brooklyn, shedding the religious underpinnings of its name to focus exclusively on its corporate parent. The health system will do marketing in Brooklyn to advertise the hospital's new identity.

For the most part, though, the name changes will be subtle, simply seeking to create a sense of consistency throughout the system.

For instance, the Hospital for Joint Diseases will become NYU Langone Orthopedic Hospital, and the Cobble Hill emergency department NYU Langone runs at the former Long Island College Hospital site will become NYU Langone Health-Cobble Hill. The corporate name NYU Hospitals Center will change to NYU Langone Hospitals.

Winthrop University Hospital, which completed the first phase of its affiliation with NYU Langone in April, has already changed its name on its website to NYU Winthrop Hospital. A full merger is expected to be completed by April 2022.

NYU Langone worked on the rebranding effort with Manhattan firm Applied Design Works. The marketing team has yet to unveil the new logo for NYU Langone Health but said little will change besides the font and the fact that it will be consistent throughout the system.

"Ten or so years ago, we must have had over 20 different logos," said Lewis. "This has been an ongoing effort to really home in on who we are and have a singular brand around NYU Langone."

"The latest hospital system to rebrand, puts health front and center" originally appeared in Crain's New York Business.