7 February 2022 — 0833 mst
A cover-up of a $24 million scandal?
A photographic history of the renaming
of Kalispell’s hospital and medical center
By James Conner
In early December, 2020, Kalispell Regional Healthcare, formerly Kalispell Regional Hospital, announced it was changing its name to Logan Health in honor of Logan Pass in Glacier National Park. The decision to change names was doubtless made months, perhaps years, earlier. But now that the medical center was ready to start changing signs, the public had to be told and a rationale for the change had to be provided.
I have a hunch that the official reason for the change, and the real reason for the change, may be different. More on that in a moment. First, a look at how the name changed on the building.
From my front porch, the hospital, approximately two miles distant and slightly north of east, is visible against the 4,000-foot wall of the Swan Range 10–12 miles to the east. Over the years, it’s been one of my favorite photographic targets. The image below was made in mid-afternoon yesterday.
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The image above was made with a 200mm lens that, on my DX DSLR, has a 6.7° horizontal angle view. Using a 300mm and teleconverter that has an effective focal length of 480mm, and a horizontal angle of view of just under three degrees, I can resolve fine details on the hospital’s building. That’s the photographic rig I used to make most of the images below.
We begin in August, 2018, when the western sides of the Montana Children’s Hospital, the tall building in the background, and KRH, displayed no signage. This image, made with a short telephoto lens, has been digitally enlarged.
Next, March, 2021. The name of the children's hospital is on its western wall. Below that sign, in smaller letters, is a sign reading Kalispell Regional Healthcare. The last two letters are not visible.
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By the end of May, 2021, Logan Health had been added to the black pillar on the hospital’s western side, while the signs on the western face of the children’s hospital remained. Taken a couple of hours before sundown, the sunlight is from the northwest.
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Sometime after that, as this 5 February 2022 image reveals, the signs on the children’s hospital were removed. Kalispell Regional Healthcare has become a nonplace.
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Why was the medical center renamed?
According the 5 December 2020 report in the Flathead Beacon:A press release stated that the brand shift will unify the growing healthcare system’s locations under the Logan Health name. The moniker pays tribute to Logan Pass in Glacier National Park.
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KRH has more than 4,000 employees, including 197 physicians in 66 specialties, and its 47 clinics and outreach services stretch across the state. Its expansion has included recent partnerships with medical facilities across the Hi-Line.
In an informational packet, KRH said its “previous way of organizing our system no longer works.” It also noted that the name change is in “no way related to any outside merger or acquisition.”
“We are becoming an organized system of care and by moving to one brand we eliminate confusion and unite our locations, workforces and communities,” the hospital said. “By unifying our naming structure under the parent brand of Logan Health, we eliminate the chance of confusion for our patients.”
The old name, Kalispell Regional Healthcare, didn’t confuse me, and I doubt it confused anyone else. It conveyed a place, a scope of service, and the fact it provided health care. Logan conveys neither a sense of place — entering Logan into Google delivers 2.3 billion results — nor a scope of service. But the new name does free the medical center from a name (Kalispell Regional Healthcare) associated with a $24 million scandal that brought the wrath of the federal government down on KRH and deeply, and perhaps irreparably, tarnished KRH’s reputation.
Renaming an institution or business to disassociate it from a sordid past is a standard practice. An example: Valujet Airlines. Founded in 1992 to provide low fares, Valujet quickly developed a reputation for risky cost cutting:
All of the airline’s planes were purchased used from other airlines; very little training was provided to workers; and contractors were used for maintenance and other services. The company quickly developed a reputation for safety issues. In 1995, the military refused ValuJet’s bid to fly military personnel over safety worries, and officials at the FAA wanted the airline to be grounded. Source: Wikipedia.
In 1996, Valujet’s Flight 592 caught fire eight minutes after takeoff. It crashed into the Everglades three minutes later, killing all aboard; 105 passengers and five crew members. An investigation revealed the cargo hold contained improperly stored chemical oxygen generators.
ValuJet was grounded the next month and not allowed to fly again until September of that same year, with a greatly reduced fleet. The airline’s major customers never returned, and the company suffered major losses.
In 1997, ValuJet purchased the much smaller AirTran Airways. Although ValuJet was the nominal survivor, executives believed that a new name was important to regain passenger traffic, so the merged company adopted the AirTran name. After the merger, AirTran made little mention of its past as ValuJet. AirTran was purchased by Southwest Airlines in 2011 and ended flights in 2014. Source: Wikipedia.
I cannot shake a sense that Kalispell Regional Healthcare’s renaming itself Logan Health was done at least partly to bury the that $24 million scandal. Google searches on Logal Health are much less likely to uncover the scandal than are searches on Kalispell Regional Healthcare. The name change may be a way of burying a costly, reputation blackening, mistake.