The parent company of West Suburban Hospital Medical Center will change the brand name under which it operates four Chicago area hospitals, Crain's reported last week. The Vanguard Health Chicago designation will disappear in June and be replaced by UnityHealth.

In the Chicago market, Tennessee-based Vanguard Health currently operates four community hospitals. In addition to Oak Park-based West Sub, it owns MacNeal Hospital in Berwyn, Westlake Hospital in Melrose Park and Weiss Memorial on Chicago's North Side.

Each hospital will retain its current name with the UnityHealth tag appended to the front end. Crain's says the change was made to improve branding and recognition of the cluster of hospitals, clinics and affiliated doctors' practices.

Over the past year the Vanguard name has variously appeared and disappeared from advertising, signage and websites related to West Sub.

Name changes are fairly common in a quickly-changing health-care environment although the new monikers often follow mergers. Recently in Chicago the merger of Resurrection Health Care and Provena Health resulted in the name Presence Health for the combined entity. Resurrection formerly owned West Sub and Westlake before selling the two hospitals to Vanguard.

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Email: ktrainor@wjinc.com