Carolinas HealthCare System is changing its name to Atrium Health. The healthcare system announced the change Wednesday and said the new name won’t limit it to the Carolinas.
Atrium Health says the name reflects a place filled with light and a chamber of the heart. What it doesn’t reflect is the region where it’s 47 hospitals and 900 plus locations are. The health care system said in a statement that this name better represents its national profile.
Atrium Health filed for the new name with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office two weeks ago.
Last year the health care system announced it was in talks with UNC Health Care about a merger of sorts. Atrium did not say how the name change relates to the proposed partnership.
But Ryan McDevitt professor of economics at Duke’s Fuqua School of Business isn’t so sure it’s totally unrelated.
“This is costly rebranding so they must have a sense that this is a really important thing to do right especially with the partnership with UNC coming up in the near future," said McDevitt. "To go to this effort to incur this expense they must have some big plans ahead.”
This is the third name change for the health care system since its inception in 1940. Atrium will start changing the signs on hospitals and clinics this year and expects the process will continue through 2019.