What's in a name? Not much, sometimes.

Over the years various sectors of the economy have gone through structural change, often from a regulated, price controlled environment to a more deregulated environment.  This has happened with electric utilities, natural gas companies, water and wastewater companies, telecommunications, and, now, hospitals.  The first step is to merge and/or acquire and/or be acquired.  Scale is viewed as way to achieve economies of scale and scope and to gain market power.  (As we now know, scale also brings its own set of problems, and such mergers often fail under their own weight.  So very few ever achieve the business economies that were envisioned at the outset.)The second step is to change the corporate name to something perceived as more jazzy or powerful or something.  This is where branding companies make their money!  The telephone companies were really "good" at that. New York Telephone Company and New England Telephone and Telegraph Company merged and became NYNEX; then merged with Bell Atlantic (itself a combination of the Bell Telephone Company of Pennsylvania, New Jersey Bell Telephone Company, the Diamond State Telephone Company, and the Chesapeake and Potomac Telephone Company (including C&P of Maryland and C&P of Virginia) to become Verizon. Meanwhile, Illinois Bell Telephone, Indiana Bell Telephone, Michigan Bell Telephone, Ohio Bell Telephone, and Wisconsin Bell merged to create Ameritech. Ameritech later combined with Southwes...
Source: Running a hospital - Category: Health Managers Source Type: blogs