Pasadena Magazine is the bi-monthly magazine of Pasadena and its surrounding areas – the diverse, historically rich and culturally vibrant region that includes Glendale, the Eastside of Los Angeles and the San Gabriel Valley all the way to Claremont.
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What's In A Name? The vast network of Adventist Health hospitals, clinics, urgent care centers, and in home services come together under a unifi ed brand. STORY BY // CUYLER GIBBONS ∫ ABOUT FIVE YEARS AGO, ADVENTIST HEALTH (AH) SYSTEM WEST TOOK HEED OF THE DIRECTION HEALTH CARE WAS GOING AND SAW THE NEED TO INTEGRATE, TO "COME TOGETHER AS A SYSTEM," AS WHITNEY DAVIS, REGIONAL DIRECTOR OF STRATEGIC COMMUNICATION AT ADVENTIST HEALTH, PUTS IT. AND THAT'S EXACTLY WHAT ADVENTIST HEALTH SET OUT TO DO OVER THE NEXT FIVE YEARS. Such integration required no small amount of heavy lifting when it came to standardizing all basic operational functions like HR, fi nance, physician support, and supply chains and mi- grating them over to a single shared IT system. But Adventist Health was simply trying to provide what they understood the public to be asking for. "There is consumer data that says 69 percent of patients prefer to receive their care from integrated health systems," says Davis. "This makes sense," says Davis, with 20 hospitals and over 275 clinics "the more inte- grated we are, the better coordinated care we can provide across the continuum," she says. "We recognized the public didn't under- stand all these access points as being part of one entity and we thought it would be wise to put everybody under the same fl ag," says Dr. Arby Nahapetian, Senior VP, and Chief Medical Offi cer, Adventist Health Southern California Region. The move, however, was in- tended not only to acknowledge the increased commonality Adventist Health had been building into previous disparate entities but to also call attention to the signifi cant effort that had been focused on making improvements in quality outcomes, the patient experience and the robustness of the delivery network Adventist has created. Most succinctly, explains Dr. Nahapetian, "We are moving from a being a hospital company to a health organization." As Dr. Nahapetian explains, following the example of colleagues in Europe and Asia "who have begun to bend the curve in the incidence of disease," the entire Adventist Health enter- prise has shifted focus from simply taking care of the sick to preventing people from getting sick in the fi rst place. "We think we are leaders in this area of transitioning away from waiting for people to get sick to take care of them, to doing a lot more prevention and disease abatement activities outside of the walls of our hospitals and in the communities we serve ," says Dr. Nahapetian. By way of example, Dr. Nahapetian cites work they are doing with the Glendale Healthy City Coalition to get sugary snacks out of vending machines in public schools, and with non-profi ts like the YMCA to do health outreach in the community around efforts such as promoting obesity reduction, and vaccination campaigns. Because people spend so much time at work, Nahapetian cites work- place outreach, such as a direct-to-employer partnership Adventist Health has established with Whole Foods as a particularly important "access point," as he calls them. "A lot of this rebranding effort is [not only] to redefi ne the brand, but to identify all these access points we've created over the last decade as being part of our care network," says Dr. Nahapetian. The actual mechanics of the rebranding effort we're in the hands of the marketing and communications teams at Adventist Health. The plan has been several years in the making, and had to address several inherent challenges, not least the breadth of the 75+ communities Adventist Health serves. "Every community is different and we have very diverse popula- tions that we serve…so how do you create a unifi ed consistent brand that resonates with each community? Well, that's a journey," says Davis. "It doesn't happen overnight and there COME TOGETHER. As part of the Adventist Health rebranding initiative, White Memorial becomes Adventist Health White Memorial. SEPTEMBER 2017 51 T R E N D S I N C O M M E R C E A N D C A S H DOLLARS & SENSE