Livingston HealthCare consolidating all departments under one name

Don’t say “Livingston Memorial Hospital” or “Park Clinic” — just call them Livingston HealthCare.

The nonprofit organization is reworking how it refers to its various departments and locations, including swapping out signs and answering phones as Livingston HealthCare.

The group is now using “Livingston HealthCare” as the name for all departments and offices, regardless of location or previous names, LHC Community Development Director Sandi Marlowe said Tuesday. The organization employs roughly 330 people and operates numerous service providers in Livingston, including the hospital on South 13th Street and the clinic on West Crawford Street.

The group took on the name Livingston HealthCare in 2001 but continued to refer to the various offices and locations by individual names, Marlowe said. That sometimes led to confusion for patients who weren’t familiar with how the individual offices or departments related to the overall organization of LHC, she said.  

“We’re trying to do this to make it easier for patients and for our community,” Marlowe said.

In recent years LHC has been moving toward using Livingston HealthCare as its sole identifier for clarity’s sake, she said. During the past several months, the group has been making a final push to complete the name change due to the West Crawford Street clinic’s relationship with Medicare.

Medicare has specific recommendations for how health care organizations brand or refer to themselves. For example, Medicare wants to know that patients can easily understand that the various service providers LHC operates are all under one umbrella organization, she said.

 To differentiate between locations, LHC generally will refer to offices as Livingston HealthCare then identify them by their physical addresses. For example, the clinic will be referred to as Livingston HealthCare at 1001 River Drive.

In recent months the group has been changing things such as email addresses for LHC workers as well as how employees answer phones in order to complete the change to referring to all offices as Livingston HealthCare.

The group is also adjusting its billing process. Patients who receive care on or after Feb. 13 will notice that bills from from various offices will be consolidated into one invoice from LHC, Marlowe said. However, bills will show patients the breakdown of services rendered. A few departments, such as Home Oxygen and Hospice, will continue to send out separate bills.

Previously, patients would receive bills from each office or department they visited.