The Virginian-Pilot
©
The name Sentara is everywhere you look these days. Makes sense, because Sentara Healthcare is the dominant health system in Hampton Roads, with, among other things, eight hospitals in the region and a medical group with more than 360 doctors.
So, was there a Hubert Horatio Sentara, scion of the famed Sentara clan back in the day?
Well, no.
The name Sentara was the brainchild of a Denver consultant in 1987. The health system that would become Sentara was then named Alliance Health System, itself a relatively new name for what had been Medical Center Hospitals before 1983.
Alliance officials felt that "Alliance" just didn't sing. Plus, it was confusing to people.
"If you look in the phone book there are something between 10 and 15 different companies just in this community that have the name of Alliance that have nothing to do with us," an Alliance official said in a newspaper story in 1987.
No, they needed a brand name. Something they really could call their own, copyright and all. They decided to hire a consultant to help.
So, Sentara, with the "a" pronounced so that the second syllable rhymed with "care," was born.
It was meant to come from the Latin roots for "center, century and sentry."
"We took those words and changed the 'c' to an 's' and added a couple letters and came up with Sentara. It doesn't mean anything," the Alliance higher-up said at the time.
At first the plan was to scrap the "Norfolk General" in the health system's flagship hospital and make it just Sentara Regional Hospital, with an advertising blitz scheduled to get people used to the new name.
Some worried that losing the hospital names everyone had come to know over many decades was maybe just a little too much change.
In the end, the old-time Norfolk General Hospital stayed.
So did the newfangled Sentara.
Sentara Norfolk General Hospital.
Nancy Young, (757) 222-5553, nancy.young@pilotonline.com
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Any organization that
Any organization that charges parking fees for people visiting sick relatives and friends is inherently bad.
Wow
Hard to believe that Sentara would let someone like nxel go.
Sentara is EVIL!!!
Worked for tose pigs for 5 years, yes I am disgruntled! They are about nothing but money, employees are expendalbe and just a number. Don't let them fool you, the mamagement in their physicians offices are sick, sick people. Mean, careless, rude, "YES" MEN AND WOMEN!! They are all about their big payouts every year, 1,000's of dollars! They get it for keeping overtime down and paying staff less. Sentara is satan!
big business/big profits = Sentara
Sentara has brought the health care system into the big capitalist arena. Health care for People - not profit!
Remember...
Sentara spelled backwards, is "A Rat Nes(t).........
half the truth---
there was such an uproar when the corporation was going to cut the name, norfolk general from any and all signs and correspondence, the employees, norfolk alum and established board members protested until the corporation relented. that's the only reason we still have any Norfolk General Claimer. I know - i was there and I wrote one of the many letters to the pilot voicing the oposition to the new name and such. In fact many considered the new name, sentara, sounded more like a new car the nissan SENTRA rather than a medical center. stupid Corporation. get it right