Business Change Management

Whether you are involved with the launch and growth of an urgent care center (UCC) or lead another type of healthcare organization, you should be asking yourself the branding question, "Why you?" states Andrea Simon, Ph.D., Founder/CEO of Simon Associates Management Consultants (SAMC), in her May 7, 2015 FierceHealthcare article, “Are Urgent Care Centers Brands Or Commodities?”

Changing Your Brand Is Never Easy. Can We Help?

Here at Simon Associates Management Consultants, because of our experience and expertise in helping companies change, we often find ourselves faced with two interesting, related, yet quite different challenges:

They say the only constant thing in life is change. And wow, is this a time of change, especially in healthcare. Medical insurance is changing. Demographics are changing. Physicians’ practices are changing. Anything and everything remotely related to the healthcare industry, it seems, is changing.

In my last blog post, I wrote about the recent tidal wave among healthcare systems to change their names. Now I would like to follow that with the questions you should ask about the power of your name, whether it really needs changing, and how to make that change really stick.

In my previous blog post, I discussed how to capture the essence of an organization and then turn that into the brand story–something that differentiates it in a way that resonates with the target audience it wants to attract.

Nationwide, more than 100 healthcare organizations have changed names over the past two years. Given the latest healthcare reforms, that list continues to grow, as healthcare systems struggle to stand out amid an increasingly competitive landscape.

For any marketing efforts to be successful, you have to start with a solid content marketing strategy and a committed leadership and staff. This was certainly true with Hurley Medical Center in Flint, MI, as Dr. Andrea Simon, corporate anthropologist and Founder/President of Simon Associates Marketing Consultants (SAMC), describes in her latest article, “Branding Hurley Medical Center: Take advantage of technology,” currently featured in FierceHealthcare's Hospital Impact.

For any marketing efforts to be successful, you have to start with a solid content marketing strategy and a committed leadership and staff. This was certainly true with Hurley Medical Center in Flint, MI, as Dr. Andrea Simon, corporate anthropologist and Founder/President of Simon Associates Marketing Consultants (SAMC), describes in her latest article, “Branding Hurley Medical Center: Take advantage of technology,” currently featured in FierceHealthcare's Hospital Impact.

When is a hospital’s name just a name, and when does it stand for something bigger? And if a hospital changes its name but doesn’t follow it up with a well-thought-out branding and marketing plan, will consumers understand, or even care, what the new name represents?