Nantucket Cottage Hospital Gets New Logo In Systemwide Rebranding

Nantucket Cottage Hospital is getting a new look.

Three years after the opening of its new facility on Prospect Street, the island’s only hospital is being rebranded with a new logo, one that emphasizes its status as a member of the Mass General Brigham healthcare system.

Gone is the blue shield with a white scallop shell on it. The new logo puts the “Mass General Brigham” name above “Nantucket Cottage Hospital,” and adds the symbol of a building inspired by the two original hospital buildings of Mass General and Brigham and Women’s hospitals – the Bulfinch Building at Mass General and the Peter Bent Brigham building at Brigham and Women’s in Boston.

The rebranding among the Mass General Brigham hospitals had already begun at its facilities on the mainland, but the rollout just arrived this week at its smallest institutions: Nantucket Cottage Hospital and Martha’s Vineyard Hospital.

The new logo was announced to NCH staff on Wednesday by Nantucket Cottage Hospital interim president Jeanette Ives Erickson.

“With the brand rollout at Nantucket Cottage Hospital, we can enhance our deep connection and relationships to this world class system, resources and capabilities and help our patients better understand how we help to improve their lives,” Ives Erickson wrote. “This systemwide collaboration will soon become more visible across our organization, in many ways, though most of the historic NCH exterior signage will remain as is.”

The rollout has been met with some consternation at other Mass General Brigham hospitals - as noted in a recent Boston Globe story - and there were similar sentiments being shared among Nantucket Cottage Hospital staff this week following the internal announcement.

“We’ve finally lost our identity to corporate America,” one longtime NCH staff member told the Current, while asking to remain anonymous.

Another longtime NCH employee said “there’s quite a stink here about the new logo.”

Nantucket Cottage Hospital orthopedic surgeon Dr. Rocco Monto was among those getting his first look at the new logo this week. While he understood the negative sentiment among some staff members, Monto said the affiliation with Mass General Brigham - now symbolized more publicly through the new logo - was a good thing for the hospital and the island.

“My thing is - a logo is just a logo - it’s not the people who deliver the care and it doesn’t speak to who we are or our character,” Monto said. “We’re Nantucket Cottage Hospital. This doesn't change anything. It clearly aligns ourselves with a family of very strong medical resources, and I think being part of that is a great thing for us, to be together with so many other great hospitals. I understand why people would be somewhat anxious about it. But it doesn't change anything. We’ve been with them for years. I find I can leverage some of the greatest talents on the whole East Coast in a phone call or have someone see them. It makes my care better.”

Nantucket Cottage Hospital’s original logo - which featured a silhouette of the island surrounded by a life preserver and nautical rope - was cast aside shortly after NCH was acquired by Partners Healthcare in 2006. It was replaced by the shield and scallop shell design, which remained the primary logo for NCH for more than a decade before this week’s rebranding announcement.

Accompanying Ives Erickson’s memo to hospital staff was a series of FAQs that stated the rollout of the new branding would happen in phases, and the full implementation could take as long as three years.