Tufts-New England Medical Center announced on Monday that it has officially condensed its name to Tufts Medical Center, a title that administrators believe will highlight its relationship with the Tufts University School of Medicine.
"Our new name showcases the exceptional partnership that we have with Tufts University," Ellen Zane, president and CEO of the Medical Center, said in a press release. "It is this robust and unwavering collaboration that allows Tufts Medical Center to offer the highest level of academic medicine and research to the patients, families, referring physicians and communities whom we honorably serve."
The Medical School has also adopted the brown Tufts University letterhead into the format for its publications, Web pages and merchandise.
"The adoption of the Tufts logo really kind of made sense because what we really want to highlight is Tufts," said Julie Jette, Tufts Medical Center spokesperson. "We don't want to keep the great care that we deliver here a secret."
According to Jette, the university and the medical center, which is Tufts' primary teaching hospital, have a closer relationship than most medical schools and their partnered hospitals.
"There are 18 faculty chairs at the Tufts University School of Medicine and 17 of these 18 chairs actually reside at the Medical School and practice here," she said.
She explained that many notable universities are affiliated with multiple hospitals, so their faculty chairs are scattered at different locations. She cited Harvard Medical School as an institution that operates in this way.
"But all of Tufts' faculty are here," she said.
A great deal of market research went into the Medical School's decision to remove "New England" from its name, Jette said. Research inquiries included talking to people within the medical center and surveying employees about what the brand should look like and represent.
Research "showed that Tufts is a very recognizable name in the market. Everyone recognizes that it's an excellent, top-tier institution, and what [the researchers] discovered was that the 'New England' part did very little. All it did was separate the fact that this was Tufts School of Medicine's primary teaching hospital, which it is," Jette said.
The Tufts Medical Center will launch a $1.5-million advertising campaign to promote the affiliation, according to a report in the Boston Herald.
Jette said that the Floating Hospital for Children, the hospital's well-known pediatric care center, has also undergone a name and logo change.
"It is going to be 'Floating Hospital for Children and Tufts Medical Center,'" she said. "Tufts is going to be written the same way the university prints Tufts, in your colors and your font, and 'Floating Hospital for Children' is going to be written above that in a sort of crayon, child-like script."
She added that the new emblem is child-friendly and will hopefully appeal to young patients. "You don't want kids to be afraid of going to the hospital," she said.
According to Jette, the Tufts Medical Center has recently witnessed increased fiscal success, and more than 70 new physicians have been recruited to the institution.
"A lot of hospitals in Massachusetts, including [ours], have had a lot of financial ups and downs in dealing with the economy and reimbursement from insurance companies. In the last several years we have been posting a much stronger financial performance," she said.
Since beginning the 2007 fiscal year more than $200 million in debt, the Tufts Medical Center has made $59 million in profit while slicing its debt in half. According to a financial press release, the hospital has focused on ways to control costs on critical, high-quality medical supplies through reverse auctions.
"Without debt capacity to fund future growth, organizations are often forced to stand still. Tufts-NEMC was not about to stand still and now with debt less than $100 million, we have options for funding future plans," the medical center's Chief Financial Officer Michael Burke said in a press release.
In these auctions, medical companies seeking business at Tufts Medical Center bid against each other to provide the lowest possible prices for these resources. This past year, reverse auctions saved the Medical Center $400,000 on spinal equipment alone.
Jette added that this year the hospital elected Michael Mendelsohn as Tufts Medical Center's Chief Scientific Officer.
"Mike Mendelsohn is increasing our research efforts, recruiting more researchers and is helping our researchers collaborate better together," she said. "A tremendous amount of research goes on here in conjunction with Tufts Medical School, and he is really sort of overseeing that research."
