The state’s largest hospital and hospital system are changing their names to reflect their affiliation with the University of Vermont School of Medicine.
Fletcher Allen Health Care in Burlington and its parent organization, Fletcher Allen Partners, will become the University of Vermont Medical Center and the University of Vermont Health Network.
The health system includes Central Vermont Medical Center and two hospitals in northern New York. CVMC will keep its name but use the University of Vermont Health Network “in all communication to express its participation in the network,” according to a news release.
The conversion will take two years and cost $5.7 million for the four-hospital network, according to a spokesman.
That money will pay for changes in logos, signage, stationery, uniforms, ID badges as well as other operating and capital expenses, said Milner Noble, director of communications for Fletcher Allen Partners and Fletcher Allen Health Care. Noble was not aware of plans to spend money on advertising the rebranding effort.
Fletcher Allen Partners has an annual operating budget of nearly $1.48 billion. The name change expenditures represent less than 0.5 percent of annual expenditures.
Dr. John Brumsted, CEO of Fletcher Allen Partners and Fletcher Allen Health Care, said in a statement that the new name reflects “teamwork.”
“Identifying ourselves as The University of Vermont Health Network emphasizes our academic core,” Brumsted said.
Though the hospital and hospital system are changing their names, they won’t forget the history behind it, Noble said.
The name Fletcher Allen is derived from two women who were instrumental in opening the first hospitals in Vermont.
Mary Fletcher was a philanthropist who never had good health and decided in 1876 to put some of her money toward opening a hospital in Burlington that for nearly a century bore her name (the hospital was actually named for her mother, also Mary Fletcher).
Fanny Allen, the daughter of Ethan Allen, who converted to Catholicism after training as a nurse in Montreal, treated wounded soldiers during the war of 1812. When the religious order of St. Joseph opened a hospital in 1894, it named it for her.
That hospital, located in Colchester, is now part of the Fletcher Allen Health Care campus.
Noble said the hospital would name a planned multi-purpose function room after Mary Fletcher, and honor her legacy in other ways.
