The not-for-profit, federal qualified health center has served Manhattanites for more than 50 years, and CEO Brian McIndoe says new name reflects its renewed emphasis on patient-centered care.
Manhattan's William F. Ryan Community Health Network has a new name.
The not-for-profit, federally qualified health center, with 19 sites across the Big Apple, is now Ryan Health.
"We just celebrated our 50th anniversary and healthcare has changed over those 50 years, and more so over the past several years," says Brian McIndoe, president and CEO of Ryan Health.
"After 50 years we felt we needed a clear direction going forward for the next 50 years. We wanted to change our name and logo because now we are focusing on our patient-centered care."
So far, Ryan Health has spent about $140,000 on the rebranding, mostly on internal signage and a website redesign. Total cost is expected to be between $270,000 and $300,000 when the rebranding is finalized in the coming months, McIndoe says.
The new name might also clear up some confusion with the clinic's more than 46,000 patients and other healthcare consumers.
"We have six major primary care sites but when you said 'William F. Ryan' the public thought of one site, our oldest site on West 97th St., which is also our largest site," McIndoe says. "They didn’t correlate the other five primary care sites as part of the network of William F. Ryan. We want people to think of our five other primary care sites."
McIndoe concedes that it's a challenge to gain attention in media- and advertising-saturated Manhattan.
"We've been in New York City for 50 years and we have a great reputation, so I don’t think we are going to get lost, but this is the Mecca, and we have to make sure that doesn’t happen," he says.
"We're always conscious about how we can reach our audience. We try to do that in a cost-effective manner. When our patients have a good service at Ryan, they reach out to friends and family and tell them how well we treated them with good clinical care and also with dignity and respect they deserve," he says.
Patients and potential patients will notice the difference when they go to the clinic's new website, and when the interact with the care teams, McIndoe says.
"That really means that, when a patient comes in, they are going to see the same patient service rep, the same nurse, the same provider. So, they get a comfort level with that care team," McIndoe says. "Our goal is that, if they feel more comfortable, they are more ready to share their concerns, and we can treat the patient as a whole, as opposed to piecemeal when they see different providers or nurses."
Ryan Health includes six community health centers, seven school-based health centers, four community outreach centers, a mobile medical van, and a staff of nearly 600 people.
John Commins is the news editor for HealthLeaders.