TAVARES — The hospital in Tavares is known simply as “Waterman” to many who work there, go for treatment there or visit someone hospitalized.
The informal way to identify Florida Hospital Waterman will remain intact with an impending name change.
Starting Jan. 2, the hospital off U.S. Highway 441 will go by AdventHealth Waterman when it and all other Altamonte Springs-based Adventist Health System facilities — across a dozen states with more than 1,000 care locations — take on the AdventHealth moniker. Waterman is currently part of the Florida Hospital network.
“‘Waterman’ does have a very strong brand,” Waterman CEO Abel Biri said after the new name was announced Tuesday. “That is a name that has endured for some 80 years, so it was important to us that we kept our legacy intact.”
Biri said the name isn’t being changed just for the sake of change. There’s a big-picture strategy behind it. Biri said the idea is to create symmetry among all of the Adventist facilities and make them recognizable throughout the many markets. It’s meant to standardize Adventist’s quality of care and culture around the country.
“What we know to be true is that consumers really like an integrated brand that they can trust for seamless care … wherever they go,” he said. “It’s important they have a brand they can trust.”
Waterman’s approximately 1,750 employees — as well as all of the system’s 80,000 employees — have gone through a training on “the whole care experience,” emphasizing “who we are, how we take care of patients and how we take care of each other,” the CEO said.
While the name is being changed, the Seventh-day Adventist Church will continue to the system’s sponsoring organization.
The change comes during a period of growth for Waterman.
Construction on a new four-story tower is due to be completed in April, an expansion that will add more than 111,000 square feet of patient-care space including an expansion of the emergency department to 58 beds and the addition of a 24-bed women and children’s unit on the tower’s second floor.
The third and fourth floors of the tower will be “shelled” for future growth and the structure will support an additional expansion of up to six floors as needed.
As part of the project, 18 in-patient beds will be added to the current 269 licensed beds, Biri said.
Waterman Medical Center was founded in 1938 by Frank Waterman, president of the Waterman Fountain Pen Company.
It started out in the top floor of what was then the Fountain Inn in Eustis and expanded as time went on. The hospital joined the Adventist Health System in 1992 and 11 years later moved to its current location, leaving a void in Eustis.
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