Ascension Health announced a rebranding and reorganization into two units, one focusing on enabling coordinated services and the other on care delivery.

The system also said it will rename some of the hospitals in its Ascension Michigan health network.

The two divisions have been named, simply, "Healthcare" and "Solutions." Ascension spokesperson Johnny Smith said via email that the move will enhance collaboration within the network, and provide better support for the physicians and caregivers working under the company banner.

Ascension’s Solutions Division brings together a number of existing subsidiary organizations that support the delivery of coordinated services. These subsidiaries provide clinical care management, information services, contracting through Ascension's provider-sponsored group purchasing and business transformation organization, biomedical engineering, venture capital investing and investment management. A number of these solutions already offer services to other healthcare providers.

The new Healthcare division, for its part, includes the organization's hospitals and related sites of care, as well as community clinics, Ascension Senior Living, the home care and hospice partnership Ascension At Home, Ascension Clinical Holdings, and the nation's second-largest doctor-led physician practice, Ascension Medical Group.

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Meanwhile, the organization's sites of care in Michigan and Wisconsin will be first to adopt the unified name of Ascension. The hospitals and other sites of care that are part of the current systems of Ascension Michigan will now use the Ascension name. These include Borgess in the Kalamazoo region; Crittenton in suburban Det​roit; Genesys serving the Flint/Grand Blanc area; St. John Providence in metro Detroit; St. Joseph in Tawas City; and St. Mary's in Saginaw and Standish. Similarly, the hospitals and other care sites of the current systems of Ascension Wisconsin — Ministry Health Care, Columbia St. Mary's and Wheaton Franciscan Healthcare —will follow suit.

"By adopting the unified name of Ascension, we will be able to better connect care and innovation across our care sites, and make it easier for patients to understand the connection between every aspect of their care so they can access the care they need and better navigate their health," Smith explained.

Collaboration among Ascension's hospitals elsewhere in the U.S. has already taken place, and according to the company, it has brought results. Through the system's participation in the Veterans Choice Program, more than 3,000 military veterans who were waiting for care through the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs have been able to access Ascension hospitals, clinics and doctors across the country. Through the Ascension Medical Mission at Home, a common initiative across the communities Ascension serves, the national health system offers free community health events that provide low-income or uninsured families access to medical care. 

This article originally appeared on Healthcare IT News sister site Healthcare Finance.

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