Summit Health’s rebrand reflects connected care mindset

Summit Health operates under that banner but also as CityMD. Two brands, connected, but distinguished by the services they provide and until recently their visual identities.

On Sept. 29, Summit Health unveiled a fresh look: new branding designs and a new logo that connect the company’s iconography.

“What we wanted to do was bring together visually for our consumers and our patients, the connection between Summit Health and CityMD by using the same sort of brand architecture — the same colors; the shared, new logo,” Jeff Alter, CEO of the Berkeley Heights-based company, told NJBIZ.

Though now more visually in-line, the new looks are a move to help solidify “Summit Health” as the primary and specialty care brand and “CityMD” as the urgent care brand.

The logo is four nearly intersecting arrows pointing toward the center, a space that Alter said represents Summit Health’s patients.

To get there, “a brand consultant … helped us think through the process,” Alter said, which included a committee with involvement from himself and the board, “a lot of treatment, a lot of voting and a lot of discussion” to get to the big reveal.

Looking ahead

“I think it’s an important step in the future of our company to bring the two together,” Alter said. “I think it was really important to have this done right, and done well for that. As we bring this all together, we bring it all together in a refreshing, modern brand treatment.”

It will take some time to see evidence of the new branding everywhere — Alter said there are about 360 locations to work through, which will probably take a couple of years. But the company’s web presence went live Thursday with the new look, as did two physical locations, one in Clifton and a CityMD in Manhattan. According to Alter, the next big push is to change all Westmed Medical Group locations to the new Summit Health brand as of Jan. 1, 2023.

This past January, Summit Health announced partnerships with Westmed and New Jersey Urology that added more than 50 locations amid its ongoing expansion.

In addition to patients and the public, the new branding also helps unite Summit Health’s team members, a group that first came together following the 2019 merger between Summit Medical Group and CityMD.

“Now everyone has the same treatment. Their badges will look the same. They’ll be able to use the same logos when necessary, their business cards all look the same. So, I think it’s an important next step in our employees life as well,” Alter said, “to know that they are all one part of one care team, although they arrive at all patients a little differently.”