A Hospital By Any Other Name

Our team at Stratasan often receives strange questions from our clients. Because the depth of our data, the range of our content, and the power of our analytic engines, we can generate meaningful answers. This includes data driven answers to market branding. Just as we trust brands for cars, clothing, and insurance, hospitals are eager to earn patient’s trust in their brand.

In 1946, The Hill Burton Act provided funding and loans to communities to upgrade old hospitals with hospital pneumatic tube carriers along with other technological advances, and build new hospitals as well. Back then, hospitals were brick and mortar buildings with red crosses and white coats. They provided care to their in-patients. Today, many of those hospitals still serve patients but have transformed into comprehensive medical centers offering specialized in-patient and out-patient care in multiple medical disciplines: cardiology, oncology, gastrointestinal, pediatrics, neurology, and hundreds more. These medical centers set themselves apart from the pack calling themselves just that, Medical Centers. Other names like Heart Institute and Cancer Center have emerged to even further brand facilities as the trusted choice. Even with the rise of medical centers, medical facilities still prefer to call themselves hospitals by more than a 2 to 1 margin. In America, there are 4,656 hospitals averaging 138 beds per facility generating over $800billion in revenue and 1,756 medical centers average 224 beds per facility generating nearly $600billion in revenue. Looking out Stratasan’s downtown Nashville window, we see Vanderbilt Monroe Carol Jr. Children’s Hospital just miles away from Centennial Medical Center and Baptist Hospital. The competition for branding is in every city from coast to coast. Clinics such as The Cleveland Clinic and the Mayo Clinic are yet another name trying to brand themselves as the leading choice for patients. Whether it’s a medical center, hospital, or clinic, medical facilities are continually striving to provide quality care and striving to set their brand apart from pack.