Irvine-based St. Joseph Health and Hoag Memorial Hospital Presbyterian are mixing the old with the new when it comes to their year-old affiliation to create an integrated regional health network.
The hospitals announced last week that Covenant Health Network is now known as St. Joseph Hoag Health.
“There was a sense from the people we were serving that the identity of who we had been from the past was very important,” St. Joseph Hoag Health Chief Executive Richard Afable said. “We heard from people that the identity of Hoag and St. Joseph Health was so important to them that they suggested we should maintain that.”
The network then “did a little bit of research and put a more scientific approach to it” that bore out the anecdotal indicators of the value of retaining the Hoag and St. Joseph Health identities, according to Afable.
It took roughly a year for the process to lead to the name change.
“That’s the way the community is thinking about us anyway, so we might as well acknowledge what they are thinking and saying rather than trying to put some other identity upon the community that may not be as relatable to them as St. Joseph Hoag Health,” Afable said.
Afable dismissed a suggestion that the previous Covenant Health Network name was “foreign” to participants, including employers and providers.
“I would say it was more about the connection and the history [that] is so strong with St. Joseph and with Hoag,” Afable said.
St. Joseph Hoag Health has started to establish its new brand identity with an emphasis on insurance brokers and employers, mostly with what Afable called “awareness activities.”
Afable noted that contracts with healthcare insurers are going to be “as St. Joseph Hoag Health in Orange County.”
“The new identity of what was Covenant Health Network and is now St. Joseph Hoag Health is the work that we’ll be doing,” he said.
Becoming St. Joseph Hoag Health gives the network “the opportunity to restate and reemphasize the importance of coming together,” Afable said.
St. Joseph Health—a $4 billion nonprofit with hospitals in Orange, Fullerton, Mission Viejo and Laguna Beach—and Hoag, a $1 billion hospital operator with campuses in Newport Beach and Irvine—announced plans to create Covenant in 2012.
State Attorney General Kamala Harris’ office issued a consent order on the deal in early 2013, leading the way to Covenant’s creation.
Hoag last month struck a voluntary agreement with Harris’ office to extend its obligation to provide women’s health services for a 20-year period instead of the previously agreed upon 10 years. Direct abortions are exempt.
The name change does not change what the integrated regional healthcare network was intended to do.
“Our intention was to create a network
of care and a collective organization that could better serve this community,” Afable said.
