Beginning in January 2016, the North Shore-Long Island Jewish Health System will have a new name
North Shore President and CEO Michael J. Dowling announced Sunday that the health system’s board of trustees unanimously approved changing its name to Northwell Health.
The announcement was first made in a video sent to North Shore-LIJ employees Sunday night. Dowling held a conference call with reporters Monday afternoon to discuss details about the announcement.
“I am now delighted to tell you that we do have a new name,” Dowling said in the video. “And the new name of the health system is Northwell Health.”
The current name has been in place since 1997 when the North Shore Health System and Long Island Jewish Medical Center merged.
Dowling said name-change discussions, which had taken place off and on for about the last decade, began again due to the public’s confusion on the correct pronunciation.
“I mean, people mispronounce it. People don’t get it correctly,” Dowling said. “Some people call us North Shore, some people call us LIJ, some people call us other things.”
Dowling said the new name was chosen to incorporate the growth of the 21-hospital health system.
“The name has only represented two facilities, and now there are much, much more than that,” Dowling said. “We wanted to reflect the totality and comprehensiveness of the system, not just reflecting one or two facilities.”
The board contemplated more than 600 different names during the selection process while working with branding consultants Monigle and Interbrand, Dowling said.
Dowling said the marketing firm J. Walter Thompson is working with North Shore-LIJ to develop a rebranding and marketing campaign coordinated by the health system’s Chief Marketing and Communications Officer Ramon Soto.
Soto said the campaign, which begins in January 2016, aims to gain the system national recognition and increase its reputation among both consumers and medical professionals.
“Leveraging the new Northwell Health name, we will build strong recognition regionally and nationally, with the goal of elevating our reputation among both consumers and medical professionals,” Soto said. “We have a powerful story to tell and we believe our new name is the ideal platform to deliver that message.”
The name change will cost North Shore “tens of millions of dollars” to rebrand the system and change all of its signage, Dowling said.
Dowling said the health system will be very active and plans to use as many media outlets as they can to successfully promote the new name.
“This will be aggressive. It has to be because changing a name is a big task. It’s not something that will get accepted over night,” Dowling said. “It will be a process. We are aware of this and we are willing to put the time and resources into doing it.”
Social media will play an important role in the campaign because of its prominence among the general public, Dowling said.
“We will be maximizing use of all technologies, you have to these days,” Dowling said. “To get to the public, you have to use the technologies that the public are used to using.”
Dowling also said the hospitals that makeup the health system network will maintain their original names, but the medical school’s name will change.
The Hofstra North Shore-LIJ School of Medicine will be renamed the Hofstra Northwell School of Medicine at the start of 2016.
Dowling said he sees the health system’s name change is important to the hospital’s future.
“This has been an incredible journey over the past two decades,” Dowling said. “The name change and rebranding campaign represent a very exciting milestone that positions us for even greater success in the years to come.”
North Shore-LIJ is the country’s 14th largest health-care system, delivering clinical care throughout the New York metropolitan area. North Shore-LIJ is also Long Island’s largest employer, with more than 61,000 employees.
