Jefferson General Hospital and ancillary services provided by the public hospital district will carry the new name of Jefferson Healthcare but retain their individual names.
That means Jefferson General Hospital will keep its name, as will other individual services operated by the agency to be known as Jefferson Healthcare.
Hospital district commissioners voted 4-1 Tuesday to approve the new name, with only Tony De Leo voting against the idea.
De Leo said he didn’t object to the idea of a single name covering all of the entities, but he didn’t think the word “healthcare” denotes the correct meaning.
“I looked in a Seattle telephone book under ‘healthcare’ and more than one-half of the names were for home health care,” De Leo said objecting to the name.
De Leo said he feared newcomers to the area would think Jefferson Healthcare provided only home health services.
He spoke in favor of using “medical center” in the name instead.
“We are the medical center for Jefferson County,” De Leo said.
He also favored adding the word “system” to the adopted name.
Commissioners Joe Wheeler and Jill Buhler said marketing committee members were concerned about the connotation that “medical center” brings.
“‘Medical center’ doesn’t deal with wellness,” Wheeler said of the committee’s concern.
“Healthcare is what we do,” Buhler said.