Highlights | New name, same great care
- UW Neighborhood Clinics are getting a name change to better reflect the clinics’ focus.
- The clinics will now be called UW Medicine Primary Care.
- Clinics will use this name distinction along with the location (e.g., UW Medicine Primary Care at South Lake Union).
The first UW Neighborhood Primary Care clinic opened in January of 1997 as part of the UW Physicians Network. Over the next several years, eight additional clinics opened in the Puget Sound region marking the beginning of UW Medicine’s community-based primary care network.
There have been many changes over the past 25 years. Additional services were added providing support for the care teams to better care for patients. The clinics continued to focus on quality, creating a Population Health Program, including achieving Patient-Centered Medical Home recognition, and the nomenclature used to identify the clinics changed several times. As the clinics begin their 25th year of service, another name change or rebranding is occurring to help consumers easily identify the primary care services that are available to them.
New naming convention
UW Neighborhood Clinics are transitioning to UW Medicine Primary Care. All clinics will use this distinction plus location — such as UW Medicine Primary Care at South Lake Union. Also adopting this nomenclature are several additional clinics operated by Debra Gussin, associate vice president of Primary Care and Population Health. These changes will help consumers better understand the depth and breadth of primary care services UW Medicine offers and leverage the extraordinary value of our reputation.
Joining the new naming convention are: the UW Medicine Lopez Island Clinic and the Northwest Primary Care Clinics including Fremont, Lake Forest Park and Outpatient Medical Center.
“Operating UW Medicine’s primary care clinics under multiple entity names is not sustainable if we are to remain competitive in the future,” said Gussin. “Rebranding our clinics as UW Medicine Primary Care will help make primary care services at our clinics easier for potential patients to find and it best reflects the primary mission of the clinics: primary care.”
How to use the new naming convention
The internal and external department names in Epic and all related interfaces have been updated to reflect this change. Here are examples of what you will see in Epic:
To see the rebranding in action, visit uwmedicine.org/primary-care.
Primary care offerings within UW Medicine based at General Internal Medicine (Roosevelt), Harborview Medical Center, Valley Medical Center, Hall Health, and UW Medical Center – Montlake are not included in the rebranding at this time.
Guest writer: Tina Mankowski, Senior Director of Media Relations and Associate Vice President for Medical Affairs.
