New Hampshire’s sole academic health system, based in Lebanon, aims to use a new name and logo to increase its brand recognition in the competitive market in southern New Hampshire and beyond.
Following the release of a prerecorded video announcing that Dartmouth-Hitchcock Health is now known as Dartmouth Health, Dr. Joanne Conroy, DH’s CEO, said that people who live south of Concord “already refer to us as Dartmouth.”
The new name gives the system a chance to “reintroduce ourselves to those people who don’t drive by our facilities every day,” Conroy said.
The health system, which includes Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center in Lebanon, four smaller hospitals, Visiting Nurse and Hospice for Vermont and New Hampshire and more than 24 outpatient clinics, has long sought to strengthen its foothold in the more populous southern part of New Hampshire, even as Massachusetts-based health systems have increased their presence there.
In addition to dropping the “Hitchcock,” the health network renamed its Lebanon cancer center and children’s hospital on Tuesday. The Norris Cotton Cancer Center now is the Dartmouth Cancer Center and Dartmouth Health Children’s now includes Children’s Hospital at Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center, or “CHaD.”
The names of the system’s member hospitals have been retained, including Alice Peck Day Memorial Hospital in Lebanon; Cheshire Medical Center in Keene; Mt. Ascutney Hospital and Health Center in Windsor; New London Hospital and DHMC. The names will appear below the Dartmouth Health name on signs, however, Conroy said.
While DH officials celebrated the changes as part of the path forward, some community members mourned the loss of names that recognized the past.
Thomas Barry, a Concord-based attorney, worked for the late U.S. Sen. Norris Cotton in Washington, D.C., from 1969 to 1975. He said he received a call from Dr. Steven Leach, the cancer center’s director, on Monday alerting him to the name change and informing him that the clinical cancer care area at DHMC will now be known as Norris Cotton Cancer Care Pavilion.
Barry said eliminating the Cotton name from the cancer center in its 50th year ignores the senator’s essential contributions to its establishment. He credited Cotton with bringing millions of dollars in federal funds to the hospital to create the cancer center and to expand Dartmouth’s medical school from a two-year to a four-year, fully accredited program.
He questioned whether dropping a name that’s been in place for 50 years will yield the results the health system’s leaders are hoping for. – NORA DOYLE-BURR/VALLEY NEWS
