Hospitals, physician groups and other care facilities owned and operated by Trinity Health in Michigan will change their names as the health system transitions to a common brand identity.
Under the rebranding plan announced today, all of the Catholic health system’s locations in Michigan — including Mercy Health facilities and operations in West Michigan — will blend “Trinity Health” into their new names with the markets in which they operate.
All Trinity Health Michigan locations will rebrand as new exterior signage is installed over the next eight months, beginning this week in Muskegon and Ann Arbor.
Mercy Health Muskegon has already changed to Trinity Health Muskegon. Mercy Health Saint Mary’s will become Trinity Health Saint Mary’s, Grand Rapids, temporarily retaining an iconic part of its name that dates back generations in the local health care market.
Saint Mary’s and other legacy names in time “will be retired” and disappear in about a year with the local system becoming known as Trinity Health Grand Rapids, said Rob Casalou, president and CEO for Trinity Health Michigan.
The Mercy Health name in West Michigan and St. Joseph Mercy Health in Southeast Michigan also will eventually disappear, Casalou said.
Temporarily retaining the legacy brand names will support the transition to the common brand identity under Trinity Health.
“We want to maintain the legacy name there (in Grand Rapids), as well some other sites, so that people make the connection between the name they’re kind of used to and the Trinity Health name,” said Casalou, who recognized people likely will still call the Grand Rapids location Saint Mary’s.
“We also know that community members often still refer to it as the legacy name, but we also believe there’s extreme brand equity in the Trinity name as we’ve been building that up over time,” he said. “The other thing that it does for us is, by combining under the one brand, we can start connecting the dots for people that it isn’t just Saint Mary’s in Grand Rapids (and) it isn’t just Mercy Muskegon. A lot of people don’t even sometimes put these together, and now under the Trinity Health brand we can build that same equity that we’ve built across the country.”
The Saint Mary’s Foundation, the philanthropy arm for Trinity Health Saint Mary’s, will maintain its name “as it is,” and philanthropic support “will always stay local to serve the hospital, our communities and the patients we serve,” according to a spokesperson.
Rebranding the Michigan operations follows a broader move by the Livonia-based Trinity Health — a large not-for-profit Catholic health system that operates 92 hospitals in 25 states — to create a single brand identity nationally. Trinity Health’s operations in New England and the Mid-Atlantic region have already adopted the common brand identity, Casalou said.
In Michigan, Trinity Health has eight hospitals, 31 medical centers, 22 urgent care centers, 24 continuing care locations, and nearly 20,000 employees with 1,320 employed physicians. Trinity Health Michigan presently operates with 25 different brand names with $4.1 billion in combined revenues.
The rebranding reflects the move to “one unified system identity aligning with our national sponsor, Trinity Health,” Casalou said.
“When the rebranding process is complete, the patients and communities we serve will know Trinity Health Michigan more completely as one of the largest and most comprehensive health systems in Michigan,” he said. “Our patients and our communities will have a much fuller understanding of the services we offer across the state, as well as our nationwide connection to one of the largest health care organizations in the United States.”
Rebranding trend
In other name changes in West Michigan, the medical group Mercy Health Physician Partners will become Trinity Health Medical Group. Mercy Health’s home care agencies in West Michigan will become Trinity Health At Home-Grand Rapids and Trinity Health At Home-Muskegon.
Mercy Health Lakeshore hospital will become Trinity Health Shelby.
Having a strong, common brand identity in Michigan and the U.S. can generate better care coordination across locations and “helps us to compete, attract and retain top medical talent in Michigan,” said Dr. Rosalie Tocco-Bradley, chief clinical officer for Trinity Health Michigan.
“It allows us to more effectively market career opportunities for our colleagues to develop and grow,” Tocco-Bradley said.
The move is the latest name change involving local health systems and follows a similar path that St. Louis-based Ascension Health took in 2018 to rebrand hospitals and outpatient facilities. In Kalamazoo, Borgess Medical Center became Ascension Borgess Hospital.
In Grand Rapids, University of Michigan Health-Metro Health last fall rebranded to University of Michigan Health-West.
Spectrum Health now goes by the temporary name BHSH System following the February merger with Southfield-based Beaumont Health.
Trinity Health Michigan will support the rebranding with a multimedia campaign that includes a TV ad that begins airing this week.
Planning for the rebranding began more than two years ago, prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, Casalou said.
“We were prepared to do it much earlier than this, but we waited to get through what we’ve all been through together in the last couple of years,” he said. “We’ve actually been working on it for a long time and it’s something that we felt we needed to do — not for competitive reasons but really to connect the dots for those that we serve.”
