For more than 50 years, the organization now known as Amplify Health has evolved alongside the patients and communities it serves. However, as the organization expanded its services, strengthened its operations, and looked toward its future, its leaders faced a growing question: Does our name still reflect what the organization has become and how it intends to grow?
For Amplify Health’s Chief Executive Officer, Scot McCray, the answer developed over several years.
Building the Foundation
When McCray joined the organization in 2021, he arrived in the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic. He found an organization with committed employees, decades of history, and a strong foundation, one that he believed needed greater direction and energy.
“What I realized is that we had a good framework and structure. We had a great history. We just didn't have the right direction and energy to propel us forward,” McCray said.
The work that followed extended beyond messaging. Amplify leaders began taking a closer look at where the organization could grow. That meant examining individual clinical and supportive service lines, identifying what was working, understanding what was not, and determining where new opportunities existed. McCray said the organization also examined how its core areas, including family medicine, dental care, and behavioral health, could become more integrated.
“We took a deep dive into each and every service line, which helped us to figure out what we were doing well and why we were doing it well, what challenged us, and why it challenged us,” said McCray.
As the organization changed internally, however, McCray began to recognize a disconnect between what it had become and how it was understood outside its walls.
Recognizing the Disconnect
One of the clearest examples came less than a mile from the organization’s main campus.
McCray had gone to lunch and struck up a conversation with a man who was born and raised in the community. He knew where the organization was located, but his understanding of its services was limited.
“He knew our location, but he thought we didn’t have services for men,” McCray said.
Despite the organization’s long history in the area, the conversation highlighted a disconnect between its presence in the community and how well its work was understood.
“I knew we had done tremendous work because just the numbers said so, but numbers and impact are different,” he said.
The encounter reinforced a larger concern. The organization was growing and expanding its capabilities, but its existing identity did not fully communicate that direction. Leaders began considering whether the existing name could evolve or whether an entirely new identity was needed.
That exploration eventually led to a deeper look at a potential rebrand. For McCray, the work was never simply about choosing a new name.
“I think the rebrand is bigger than a name change. The name change is the shock, right? What sustains us is people actually seeing the branding different,” he said.
Finding Amplify
The rebrand became part of a broader strategic planning process involving the entire organization. McCray described it as “all hands on deck.”
“There’s not one part of the organization that didn’t play a piece in the early fact finding and data of why we were going down this road,” he said.
The process included conversations in both large and small groups. Once the organization determined that it would move forward with a rebrand, a smaller group began the work of reviewing potential names. There were hundreds.
“Amplify Health truly jumped off the page,” he said.
Selecting a name had to connect the organization’s history with the organization it was working to become. For McCray, the word was both active and aspirational. It could describe what the organization was doing while establishing an expectation for how it would operate.
Innovation, Impact, and Integrity
That future is being shaped around three values: innovation, impact, and integrity.
McCray sees integrity first through people receiving care and those delivering it. It is reflected in the character of employees, the relationships formed throughout a patient’s experience, and the organization’s responsibility to operate with strong governance.
“The things that we do are people-driven,” McCray said.
Impact, meanwhile, requires looking beyond numbers.
For Amplify Health, that means examining whether its work can be felt beyond its campuses and throughout the communities it serves. McCray said the organization is pursuing “sustainable growth, smart growth, and optimal patient care.”
Innovation helps to make that possible.
Technology has changed nearly every part of healthcare, from registration and medical records to communication between patients and their care teams. Amplify Health intends to continue using technology to improve the patient experience, but McCray said innovation cannot come at the expense of human relationships.
“Our innovation strategy to enhance the patient experience will never diminish, but we're doing it from a human centric standpoint,” he said.
That means technology remains a tool rather than a replacement for the people delivering care.
More Than a New Name
For patients who have built relationships with the organization over the years, McCray said the transition to Amplify Health does not mean leaving those relationships behind.
“Your doctor is still your doctor. Your nurse is still your nurse. The same upbeat tone that you heard over the phone when you scheduled an appointment is still there, and the same smiling face and skill level of someone who can navigate you into your appointment at the front desk is still there,” he said.
The rebrand also comes alongside other organizational changes, including professional development, training, new performance measures, workforce investments, and physical growth. McCray said those efforts were all a part of the journey toward Amplify Health.
Together, they represent the larger ambition behind the new identity: not simply to announce that the organization has changed but to build an organization capable of continuing to change.
Amplify Health marks a new chapter and a chance for the organization to more clearly define its place in healthcare, and unlike a logo, sign, or name, that work has no fixed endpoint.
“It just continues to grow.... It's amplified,” McCray said.