What's in a name?

• Position: UPFRONT

In Romeo and Juliet, his tale of young lovers caught between feuding families, Shakespeare poses that very question, then tries to answer it. "That which we call a rose," his heroine argues, "by any other name would smell as sweet." Well, we all know how that turned out. As any marketer will tell you, name is a major part of the game, branding being how a business defines and describes itself to both customers and competitors. That thought occurred, not long after our March issue came out, when I received this e-mail.

As a woman, a nurse and president and CEO of an independent health system in North Carolina for the past six years, I found the cover story interesting. I suspect that Joann Anderson, a nurse and president and CEO of Southeastern Regional Medical Center (an independent health system) found it equally interesting.

In good humor and with warm regards, Laura Easton, President/CEO Caldwell Memorial Hospital Inc.

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

We had set out to do the story about the CEO of Gastonia-based CaroMont Health Inc. because she was unusual--a woman who had started out as a nurse and was now running an independent health-care system--but our reporting led us to believe she was unique. In his usual thorough manner, Ed Martin had checked with the state nurses and hospital associations, and Valinda Rutledge was the only one they were aware of. While the story was being edited, he went back and double-checked for health systems with women CEOs, even going down, name by name, the roll of the hospital association's more than 130 members. There is no specific designation of...