health mind and body

Northwell: We’re sticking with ‘Jewish’ and ‘Long Island'

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This letter is in response to a cover story in The Jewish Star’s Jan 8 edition.

I would like to clear up several inaccuracies regarding The Jewish Star’s front-page story, “Jewish boy is first born as hospital drops Jewish name.” Your headline mistakenly states that the “hospital has dropped its Jewish name.” Long Island Jewish Medical Center continues to be known as Long Island Jewish (LIJ) Medical Center.

As is explained later in the story, the health system to which LIJ belongs has changed its name from North Shore-LIJ Health System to Northwell Health. The corporate name change reflects the reality that the health system is much more than just two institutions — North Shore University Hospital and LIJ Medical Center — and now extends far beyond Long Island. Rebranding as Northwell Health recognizes our evolution into a regional clinical, research and education enterprise that now includes 21 hospitals, 450 outpatient practices and other facilities located throughout the New York metropolitan area. For those reasons, and because of the potential for future expansion, the health system’s Board of Trustees decided to embrace a new name that did not confine the organization by geographic modifiers.

Your readers should also know that while most of our hospitals will be retaining their names, there are two exceptions: Forest Hills Hospital and Franklin Hospital in Valley Stream will be more closely affiliated with Long Island Jewish Medical Center. In the near future, they will be renamed Long Island Jewish Medical Center at Forest Hills and Long Island Jewish Medical Center at Valley Stream, further dispelling the suggestion in your story that our health system has “ended its identification with Jewish and Long Island.”

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