When rebranding, many healthcare facilities tout a new focus on more personalized care, rolling out programs to improve the patient experience. Others opt to focus on services in order to earn regional and national recognition for their positive outcomes.
And an ambitious few rebrand around both platforms, though they rarely measure up.
Salt Lake City's LDS Hospital is one of those ambitious few and an exception. Due to its unique circumstances, holds true to its new brand promise of providing extraordinary care in a highly personalized way.
Repositioning after losing 208 beds
Five years ago Intermountain Healthcare, LDS' parent health system, moved its flagship hospital from LDS to the then-new Intermountain Medical Center. At the time, LDS was a 420-bed facility that offered many high-end services such as solid organ transplant, level one trauma services, open heart surgery, and level three NICU care. Once Intermountain opened its doors, many of those services moved there. LDS began to transition to 212 beds.
While some would have viewed the downsizing as a negative, LDS' administration realized the potential that presented. They decided to create "care as individual as each patient" and focus on improving its remaining services.
"Positioning LDS Hospital as an elite community hospital helps differentiate us for the unique higher-end services we provide," says Jim Sheets, LDS' administrator. "Such services include bone marrow transplant for acute leukemic patients, inpatient, and outpatient mental health services, total joint replacement, intensive care medicine, sleep services, and a minimally invasive surgical center of excellence."
Revamping facilities along with care
Along with this refocusing, LDS underwent a $32 million renovation in order to revamp the facilities and expand its remaining services. It added a weight-loss surgery program because it had extra operating rooms, it doubled the size of labor and delivery rooms to accommodate large family gatherings, and it expanded its psychiatric services.
To add that personal touch, LDS sends thank-you cards to each patient, lets patients and family check out laptops, and offers room service. It also plans to roll out massages, manicures, and pedicures in 2013.
"We take great care to focus on each patient and their specific needs, desires, and interests while they're in the hospital," Sheets says.
Though the hospital never closed during construction, LDS hosted a "reopening" earlier this month, inviting the public and media to tour the new hospital and learn about its new personalized approach to care. The hospital also held several other events, including an employee barbeque, retired physician and administrator luncheon, community lecture, community health fair, and a movie night with one of its community partners.
Looking to the future
As of now, LDS has no plans for any further service expansions.
"We want to become the very best at what we do and continue to provide highly personalized, extraordinary care to all our patients," Sheets says. "We have a very important role in the community and take great pride in the trust the community has placed in us to serve their diverse healthcare needs."
And that trust is well deserved. LDS was recently recognized by U.S. News & World Report as the top hospital in Utah and one of the top 30 hospitals nationally for gynecological care.
LDS' story is inspirational to other organizations that are charged with rebranding in the face of adversity. In LDS' case, a loss of services allowed the hospital to hone its fortes and focus on really matters—its patients.
Marianne Aiello is a contributing writer at HealthLeaders Media.