I've Got News

... or maybe I should say, "NUHs:"

As I post this, the flags are going up as our hospital system, formerly known as Evanston Northwestern Healthcare, officially announces their new name and brand:
"NorthShore University HealthSystem"
(Be sure not to separate the words).
The new preferred shortened nickname? "NorthShore." The new logo is shown above and contains Nike-like swooshes (representative of the waves of Lake Michigan, I guess) as part of the healthcare cross. ("Cooler by the lake" maybe?)

They decided to go with a more conventional blue hue rather than our former purple motif - certainly not as shocking to the eye. Our new website url has changed from enh.org to northshore.org.

So there you have it. Our name has officially changed. For the adminstration and marketers of healthcare, this is a BIG day. The loss of the Northwestern name will require a reassurance to the business community and community at large. As such, there is real risk (and expense) to changing your brand. Stationary, signage, voice messages, policy manuals, and literature distributed to patients must be changed. But the change, regretfully, has become necessary, as consolidation of health systems nationwide continues and large systems compete.

But the real test will be when the rubber meets the road: first impressions for new patients, ancillary providers, and nursing and physician recruits are everything in these days of internet communications, lightning-fast judgements, and "quality ratings." The hope is the new name, coupled with its continued academic affiliation with the University of Chicago, will invoke a sense of community, stability, and prestige. For established patients and their doctors, the change brings more of an inconvenience having to type six additional letters for the internet address; the people, the buildings, and the healthcare are very much the same.

Now, as I'm off to pick up my new lab coat, stand by as the local media branding blitz begins...

-Wes

It's Official: University of Chicago Joins With ENH

Evanston Northwestern Healthcare (ENH) and University of Chicago will join hands to train U of Chicago medical students.

For the Northwestern University medical students we currently train, the feelings are mixed. Perhaps this is fear of the unknown. Perhaps the feelings are justified. I spoke with a third-year medical student who felt that the ripple effect has already taken hold and worries that their training will be viewed differently when they apply for jobs. What is clear, is how vulnerable they feel during the upcoming transition period and the uncertainty of their continued training.

For faculty members here at ENH, too, many questions remain: what will be the new name of ENH? (Expect an announcement soon, now that ENH can move on.) What benefits for faculty members will convey from the former Northwestern affilitation agreement to the new affiliation agreement with U of Chicago? Who will keep their academic appointments and who will lose them?

One thing's for sure: there'll be lots of changes. Let's hope they're for the better.

-Wes

The Feeding Frenzy Has Begun

... and it's all about the research money:

"An e-mail sent Wednesday to top Feinberg faculty from Rex L. Chisholm, dean of research, included an attachment that lists 29 researchers employed by Evanston Northwestern who draw federal research dollars. Those people will lose their Northwestern faculty positions as the affiliation is unwound over the next year.

“The dean’s office is interested in hearing from you if you have interest in exploring the possibility of recruiting any of them to NU,” Dr. Chisholm’s message says. He requests “a guesstimate of the resources that might be required to successfully move them to NU.”

About 700 of Northwestern’s 3,000 full- and part-time faculty work at Evanston Northwestern. The three-hospital system has its own research enterprise — it received more than $100 million in external grant money in 2007 — and competes with Northwestern for federal funding."

-Wes

Ending an Era

It's official: ENH and Northwestern are parting. It's a sad day, really. The relationship, while strained, was a good one in many ways for both parties. But business is business, and the complexities of the ever-changing Chicago healthcare market have strained the marriage to its breaking point.

Now ENH must choose a new name, change its stationary, find a new academic partner, re-establish some 180 academic appointments, re-certify its training programs, and work toward re-branding itself.

It'll be interesting, to say the least. I'll be interested to see what the community thinks...

-Wes

Addendum: More from the Chicago Tribune.

Chicago: A Case Study in Healthcare Market Consolidation

It was quite a morning for Evanston Northwestern Healthcare physicians as we heard from Mark Neaman, our President and CEO, about the rapidly-evolving healthcare market in Chicago. In his presentation, he chronicled the series of events that have lead to the changes seen so far in Chicago, and opened a glimpse of what’s to come.

Most of the news was old news:

1. He reviewed the financial struggles of Condell Medical Center in Libertyville from “contractual discounts” resulting in its suit with Blue Cross and subsequent countersuit of Blue Cross against Condell with the eventual withdrawal of Blue Cross patients from the Condell system. Condell bled so much red ink they were soon seeking a buyer as the economic impact of the situation became clear. (ENH looked at the opportunity, but Advocate was favored by Condell as their suitor),


2. The financial struggles and huge debt load of Rush North Shore, coupled with Rush Medical Center (downtown)’s desire to make a $1 billion dollar mega-expansion and ENH’s need for local geography, prompting ENH to bid for Rush North Shore, and


3. the newer alliance between Northwestern Memorial Hospital and its Northwestern Medical Faculty Foundation, making it a formidable competitor to the our financially separate ENH system as they also compete for market share in the desirable Northern and Western suburbs of Chicago – especially since they just bought 10 acres of prime real estate near I-294 and Willow roads, only 1 mile from ENH’s Glenbrook Hospital.

If the dust settles and the Federal Trade Commission approves, it is clear that the Advocate/Condell acquisition will compete with the ENH/Rush NS system, which will, in turn, compete against NMH/NMFF for the affluent patient population in Chicago.

Much of this healthcare system consolidation has been enabled by the emergence of the Electronic Medical Record that permits geographically disparate “virtual offices” to exist within a single healthcare system: it’s no longer which hospital or clinic you receive your healthcare from, but rather which “system.” The Mayo Clinic, with its satellite centers in Scottsdale, Arizona and Jacksonville, FL, has known this for years.

This has lead Evanston Northwestern Healthcare (ENH) to rethink their name and academic affiliation, since their tenuously amicable academic affiliation with Northwestern University has become seemingly irrevocably strained, limiting ENH’s ability to differentiate itself from its staunchest competitors (especially since its name contains "Northwestern"). For many reasons, it seems, the earlier 1994 academic affiliation agreement between Northwestern’s Feinberg School of Medicine is not likely to last much longer. While there were initial reports of an academic affiliation with Rosalind Franklin medical school, it was revealed today that ENH has recently entered into a 60-day agreement to evaluate a possible academic affiliation with the University of Chicago. This would be a represent a more formidable competitor to stem Northwestern's north suburban expansion.

Yes folks, our purple logo may soon change to maroon and the ENH 'brand' will likely cease to exist in the not-so-distant future.

All's fair in love and war when it comes to hospital systems, it seems.

It is important to note that these discussions are still ongoing, but public enough for them to have been announced to a significant portion of the ENH physicians today. Therefore, I suspect they are serious. Many questions remain unanswered. What this means to academic affiliations for ENH’s “affiliate” physicians, physician academic benefits, and the like, are uncertain. Clearly, ENH has a vested interest in maintaining its hard-earned physician affiliations and will be working to resolve these issues once the air clears a bit about our future.

While change is difficult, it seems necessary if ENH is going to continue its own growth strategy while the market forces evolve in Chicagoland. One thing is certain, though, the competitive climate between centers is more feverish than ever and change, it seems, is inevitable.

Perhaps on a broader note, other cities across America are likely to see the same forces toward consolidation, especially as the electronic medical record facilitates geographic spread of hospital system brand identity. It is clear that many doctors will increasingly become reliant on large healthcare systems to weather the economic impact of the threatened 10.1% Medicare physician pay cut in July, the ongoing unrealistic bureaucratic requirements for pay for performance measure documentation, the ongoing lack of tort reform, and increased work requirements by staff physicians to offset the upcoming resident work hour reductions from 80 to 56 hours per week.

-Wes