as aid in effort to connect with community
Meridian sees change
as aid in effort to connect with community
By gloria stravelli
Staff Writer
Riverview Medical Center in Red Bank is stepping out from under a corporate umbrella and will re-emphasize the ties it has forged with a community it has served for more than seven decades.
In a marketing realignment announced recently, Riverview and its affiliated hospitals in Neptune and Brick will assume a more prominent public role with parent Meridian Health taking a back seat in marketing programs.
"The focus has gotten away from the hospital, and that’s what communities connect with," explained Diane Gribbin, communications manager for Riverview.
"There is a new focus on building relationships with the community we serve," she added "We have become primary once more in our relationship with the community."
Consolidated in 1997, the Wall-based Meridian system is a family of nonprofit health care partners comprised of Riverview, Jersey Shore Medical Center, Neptune, and Medical Center of Ocean County, Brick, and health care provider companies.
With more than 7,300 employees, Meridian is the largest employer in Monmouth and Ocean counties and the 16th largest in New Jersey.
Meridian hospitals and affiliates cared for 334,000 inpatients and 2.4 million outpatients, and delivered 33,000 babies since its formation in 1997.
While promoting the new health care system image helped people to understand they could access an integrated system from birth through hospice care, Gribbin noted, the concept projected a corporate image.
"There was some confusion about what Meridian is," she said. "People didn’t understand unless they utilized the system. We’re not a big for-profit organization."
Now that the Meridian name is well established and the concept of a health care system is familiar to consumers, the thinking is it’s time to give the hospitals back a more prominent public role.
According to Meridian marketing strategists, the changes are designed to promote a friendlier presence and closer ties with the community.
At Riverview — which has always had strong ties to the greater Red Bank community — the change is most visible in new logos. But other affiliates will undergo name changes and forge new affiliations, and Meridian itself will undergo a name change designed to soften its business image.
Meridian will drop the word "system"— viewed as a bureaucratic buzzword — from its name and will now be known simply as Meridian Health.
"It seems like a subtle change, but really it’s big. We feel we’ve gotten lost in the shuffle behind the Meridian name," she said. "We are just at a point in our development where we need to evolve into this next step. It’s important now to re-emphasize the individual hospitals and build upon relationships we have with the communities each of our hospitals serve."
For example, Gribbin said, partner agencies engaged in community outreach like senior services would conduct health fairs and health education, all under the Meridian banner.
"They would bring a banner with them that said Meridian with Riverview in small print at the bottom. Now the banner will say Riverview," she explained. "It will be very apparent that they’re not from this huge corporation, but from your community hospital."
Riverview president Timothy Hogan acknowledged that members of the community, especially longtime residents, have built strong relationships with Riverview. He said the new marketing initiative will help the hospital to reconnect with the community at an exciting point in Riverview’s 75-year history.
The hospital is currently in the middle of a $63 million expansion project which, when completed, will provide state-of-the-art emergency care and critical care services and technology in addition to the new and renovated Cancer Care and Inpatient Rehabilitation services that have opened already, Hogan said.
Among the changes is a new name for Medical Center of Ocean County, Brick, which will change its name July 1 to Ocean Medical Center to reflect its service to all areas of Ocean County as well as its other health care delivery services.
Currently undergoing a $43 million expansion, the time is right for the Brick hospital to advance its own name and expand on relationships with its growing community, said W. Peter Daniels, president of Ocean Medical Center. "People have been frustrated with the inconsistent use of our hospital’s name and the consequential identity issues," he noted.
Another hospital name change involves Jersey Shore Medical Center, Neptune, which has been a teaching hospital affiliated with the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey — Robert Wood Johnson Medical School since 1982.
Continued advances in this relationship have made it eligible for the elite designation of "university hospital" status.
At a private ceremony earlier this month, an agreement was signed by the medical center and the university that will result in a new name for the medical center — Jersey Shore University Medical Center — effective July 1.
"Development of academic and clinical research programs as well as the training of the next generation of physician leaders is an ongoing priority," said Steven Littleson, president of Jersey Shore, which was established 100 years ago.
According to John Lloyd, president of Meridian Health, university status will benefit the entire system and make possible the delivery of advanced regional care to the community.
"Our goal is to bring the absolute best advanced medicine to the entire region through a partnership between all our hospitals and physicians," he said.
In addition, Lloyd said Meridian will strengthen relationships with educational organizations to expand opportunities to recruit and retain hard-to-staff health care positions to ensure a highly skilled professional staff.
In addition to the three hospitals, Meridian also provides a broad range of health care services that assist patients and their families off-site. The new Meridian Health brand connects all of these organizations with the hospitals to create a family of health care partners.
Located throughout Monmouth and Ocean counties, Meridian partner companies and programs include Meridian Assisted Living, Meridian Home Care, Meridian Hospice, Meridian Occupational Health, Meridian Behavioral Health, Meridian Nursing and Rehabilitation, Meridian Health Resources, Institute of Integrated Health and Wellness, Alert Ambulance Service, and Shore Rehabilitation Institute.
The companies create an integrated network of nonhospital-based health care services that provides the same level of care patients have come to expect from the hospitals, explained Salvatore Inciardi, vice president of business development at Meridian Health, adding, "More and more, health care is delivered outside of the hospital’s four walls."
The new brand will take shape with new logos, name changes, advertising, and educational materials being introduced over the next few weeks.