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Becker’s Healthcare Podcast
Leadership, Legacy, and Community: A Conversation with Baystate Health CEO Peter Banko
00:19:06
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- [00:00]
Chris Sosa
Welcome to the Beckers Healthcare Podcast. I'm Chris Sosa, your host and today we are very excited to be joined by Peter Banko, who of course is the CEO and president of Bay State Health in Massachusetts. Peter, how are you doing today?
- [00:13]
Peter Banko
I'm having a great day.
- [00:15]
Chris Sosa
So glad to hear it, Peter, and thank you for joining us. This conversation's a little bit different than maybe some typical healthcare podcasts, which is what we're going for here. Want to dive into a little bit about who you are and what major leader you are today and what you want to share with other leaders that make sense?
- [00:31]
Peter Banko
Yeah, absolutely. I'm looking forward to it.
- [00:33]
Chris Sosa
Awesome. Well, on that note, the first question I have for you simply what is something you learned outside of healthcare that you've applied to your career?
- [00:42]
Peter Banko
Yeah. So my mother's family farm. My mother grew up on a family farm in a small town in northwestern Ohio that's still operating today. And my father's mother grew up on a dairy farm in upstate New York. But I never grew up on a farm. I grew up in suburbia of New Jersey and I was always, we got to spend time a couple weeks during the summer in Ohio. And I was always amazed at my two uncles who took over the farm from my grandfather. Their abilities were deep and wide. So I was studying engineering at the time, the Mechanics of Solids. And my uncle picks up the book and I was having trouble in the class. He like explained it to me and he had a high school education, so they fixed everything on their own. Why one uncle built his own house. They knew engineering and architecture, they understood weather, they knew the financial markets, they, they had a discipline about their day. They understand like timing and pacing when to do something, not to do something. They're always executing like in the short term while having that long term generational vision of what the, what the family farm would be and getting your hands dirty. So all those lessons for me apply directly to healthcare. And I was just amazed at these two individuals that I think it's in their DNA. I'm not too sure it's, I inherited that DNA. It's been a challenge. You know, I've have to work at it. But everything seems so effortless for them and they're, they're working. Yeah, farming's a tough business to make it in, but it always seemed effortless and, and so those principles I talked about I think apply to, to what I do or what anybody else does.
- [02:31]
Chris Sosa
Yeah, I'm always fascinated as well by, by people who seem to have acquired knowledge and it's. You just. I'm amazed that one, they're able to acquire it and two, that it applies to so many other things as you just articulated. So yeah, that's great that you were able to take that and, and run with it from something that seems so disparate, farming and say, you know what, this is going to work in healthcare. All right, so second question I have for you is what is something you learned about yourself from working in healthcare?
- [03:05]
Peter Banko
So other than a weekend supporter in a supermarket, that didn't work out too well. I've worked in healthcare since 1984, since I was in high school. So what have I learned? I think I didn't choose healthcare. I felt like it, it chose me. So I started volunteering in high school. My first job at right out of high school as, as a patient transporter. So I literally, it was a major teaching hospital in central New Jersey. I traversed, I knew every corner of the hospital, some that I wasn't supposed to know. I interacted with every role, individual in the organization. But I was on a different path in college. In the middle of my junior year, the CEO and I was at Notre Dame. It was a P aside and she's like, hey, come in my office. And she said that she had been watching me over the last couple years and she said that like, healthcare and healthcare leadership felt natural to me. And I came from a family of teachers, so like management roles or being a CEO were for me felt unattainable or a mystery. And she blatantly said, like, I see leadership potential in you that I didn't see in myself. And I here's what I think you should do. And. And she was right. I feel at home in healthcare, you know, today, 41 years later, I don't really know how to do anything else. But there was. I got into it and then someone pulled me aside and basically said, this is what you have to do. So I feel like chose me along the way. So work today at Base State feels like that same conversation. I think it was 1987 or 88 with Sister Marie de Paze. I mean, I'm having a lot, a lot of fun. I've rekindled that passion. You know, so many of us, our daughter's a medical fourth year medical student. I see that passion and all too often careers drain that out of us and we forget why we got into it. But the work I'm doing today reminds me every day of why I'm doing it. And just turned 58amonth ago and I Find now more than ever I'm hyper focused in on, you know, making sure I'm getting things right for the organization and community rather than insisting on being right.
- [05:23]
Chris Sosa
Peter, I am curious when you said that, when you knew every corner of the hospital that maybe you weren't supposed to know, I mean, what sort of adventures were you on and, and what do you have takeaways from of said adventures, we'll call them.
- [05:39]
Peter Banko
I wasn't a smoker, but I learned early on that that was the place in the 80s to learn what was going on in the scuttlebutt. So. And smokers found creative places to smoke. So I would say occasionally I was on the roof of the hospital with a couple people that were smoking and I was just listening. So probably not a great place to be. But yeah, I knew, I knew every nook and cranny of that and of that hospital, which was good.
- [06:07]
Chris Sosa
Well, I imagine that very much applies to today. Just learning that the scuttlebutt, or you might use a different term for the operations of the hospital. So in what ways are you learning that if you're not on the roof of the hospital, which maybe you are, maybe you're not, tell us.
- [06:24]
Peter Banko
It's hard to be visible on four hospitals with 13,000. I think it's impossible to know everybody. But we just, you know, we just kicked off a video blog this week. I, you know, I made it a practice. Anybody can email me. I had one this morning on something that changed in the or. I didn't know what it was, but I'm helping the person get to the bottom of it. So I tried to, I made a practice of, hey, if you email me within 24 hours, I'll get, I will get back to you. You know, most, I would say 95% of the time I have no clue what the person's talking about, but I can at least connect them to the right person in the organization and hopefully solve a problem.
- [07:04]
Chris Sosa
Oh, I'm sure that's very helpful to not only yourself, but everybody within the organization. I'm glad that that is carried over. Certainly. Peter. Next, I want to just simply ask you, you know, everyone has good days, bad days, but what would you consider the most memorable day or period or era of your career? I'm not implying at all that it's near the end, but let's just look back and say, you know what so far has been memorable to you still.
- [07:29]
Peter Banko
Have a kid in high school and one in medical school. So it's not even close to the End. So I woke up on a Sunday morning in Corpus Christi, Texas. We were living on North Padre island, and I got a call at my house, we still had house phones and pagers, that the Vice President of the United States had been shot and was in my hospital. So I raced into the hospital.
- [07:52]
Chris Sosa
And.
- [07:52]
Peter Banko
I, I went to the er and I realized quickly it was not quite the story, but the vice president, Vice President Dick Cheney did shoot someone hunting quail, hunting on the Armstrong ranch the day before in South Texas. And that person was in the hospital. And then began my. It was a week, but my 15 minutes of fame, a really surreal experience. You know, I, I got to talk to Ross Perot on the phone. I had a direct line to the White House. You know, the whole experience. Media. I, you know, came in the next Monday morning and there was media from all over the globe parked outside the hospital. Geraldo Rivera called my house and talked to my wife. I got a gift, gift basket in my office from Good Morning America. So it was, it was a, it was my 15 minutes of fame. It's still mentioned, like, I think one of my kids, it's in their history book that they Learned like in 7 or 8th grade.
- [08:51]
Chris Sosa
So really, wow.
- [08:54]
Peter Banko
It was a cool experience where I was in no way prepared to deal with it doing press conferences every day, but it was a good learning experience and kind of cool part of the career.
- [09:08]
Chris Sosa
Yeah, I don't know that too many people, even in your position, Peter, your peers can say they have something that compares to that. You know, it doesn't mean it's good or bad, but I mean, for you, it was obviously a good thing that you, you know, know we're, we're able to, to help, you know, shepherd, the, the house is through that experience. But when you think about that, when you weren't in front of the cameras, I mean, what, what was that like exactly? What was going through your head?
- [09:36]
Peter Banko
There were, there were just experiences that you just kind of had to pinch yourself, you know, with confidentiality. I can't, I can't talk. Some of them were clinical. Some, you know, I got, I'm in the patient's room. He's like, can you get the phone? Ross Perot's on the phone. It was just, just a lot of the things like, hey, pinch me. My sister in law woke up and she used to work now internationally. She woke up in Australia. I was on the front page of the Australian paper and she saw my pictures. She's like, did, did Peter kill my sister? Why is he on the front page, you know, family members or people you hadn't heard from since high school. I had a family member pointing in a break room, hey, that's my cousin. Yeah, that's not your cousin. You're making that up. So it's just, it was just a weird experience.
- [10:24]
Chris Sosa
Yeah, Peter, I can only imagine what that was like. But, you know, it's done now and maybe, hopefully it doesn't happen again. I mean, obviously you don't want anyone to get shot. That, that's by far bottom line. But, but you, you might have something that, that's similar that, that engulfs the health system. Right.
- [10:43]
Peter Banko
I think on smaller scales, I mean, it's hard, it's hard to be on ev. You know, I'm doing interviews with Japanese media that, you know, that I, I don't wanna, I don't want anything to happen at Bay State that gets us in the, on the evening news in London or Japan. But yeah, I mean, you know, when I, I've interviewed, this is my third job since then. When you interview, like, hey, do you have any media experiences like. Oh, just a, just a little bit, right? Yeah, yeah.
- [11:08]
Chris Sosa
Oh, good. I'm glad you're extracting the good from that whole situation, which is what any leader, any real ambitious and, you know, well put together person would do, I would think. All right, let's shift gears a little bit here, Peter. So there's so many issues that are covered in the industry, so many are not. And it's the latter that I want to focus on at least for a minute here. So specifically, what issue or aspect of health care do you think deserves a brighter spotlight and from whom?
- [11:37]
Peter Banko
Yeah, CEOs have an obligation and for me it's as the community goes, so goes the healthcare organization. And the reverse is true. So as the healthcare organization goes, so goes the community. So, you know, we're talking about the one big beautiful bill, increasing pressure to be profitable and sustainable and viable long term. But I don't think we're talking enough about kind of the calling or mandate to operate responsibly and contribute to our communities and the success of our community. So, you know, to be of and with the community, and that extends to a bunch of things. So, you know, making sure we're paying fair wages and off and have a welcoming and belonging environment, work environment, we're impacting our local environments. We're not doing harmful things. Our investment in the community is impactful. So are we spending money with local businesses? How are we investing in the community? Transparent governance and Leadership more important than ever before. And getting back to my uncles in farming, balancing short term decision making with providing long term value. So that generational look, Peter, that's all.
- [12:54]
Chris Sosa
Very interesting to me in terms of we have so many things that are happening in the community that they're pulling you in so many different directions. And it's a goal that I think that you can probably never say you're finished, right? I wouldn't imagine so. So, but along those lines, how do you measure your success even if it's a day ahead of the next day, the next week, the next month, the next year?
- [13:21]
Peter Banko
Yeah, that's a hard one. You know, in our strategic plan for last year, we we've incorporated both short term and long term metrics. So one of the metrics around, we want to be the economic and health pillar in Milling. So we're the largest employer in Western Mass, 13,000 people, UMass Amherst, great universities, 9,000 MassMutual international global companies, 3,000. Then it falls off a little bit at a lot of small employers. So taking that role seriously. So we developed a metric around how do we long term impact the built environment? So housing, food, the economy, development, and then how do we impact food security? So we've got, you know, most communities have food deserts. So how, how do we play a deeper role in that? And that's not, you know, I think we're debating that now. Are we a convener? We're not going to do it all ourselves. Are we a facilitator? Are we the catalyst? Right? Do we put some of the money in first and bring others to the table? And that's what we're sorting through now. So you know, we've got to make, especially with what's going on financially and some of the challenges we have and other things in Massachusetts in particular too, you know, making those short term decisions, but also having metrics and other things that we're holding ourselves accountable to the long term.
- [14:41]
Chris Sosa
Peter lastly, as you're working as a health system toward all these goals, you need all sorts of people. Nobody's doing it alone, especially not CEOs, presidents, etc. So in your 40 some odd years in healthcare, could you tell us what's an underrated leadership trait that you've seen come to the fore as something that's very useful, very helpful to not only the health system of the community and who do you see embody it? Whether it's a specific person or group of people or a type of person, you know, you define that as you wish.
- [15:15]
Peter Banko
Yeah, so I Call it anticipatory leadership. So in my first CEO role at St. Vincent of Little Rock, I had a boss at Catholic Health Initiatives, Beth o', Brien, that kept on encouraging me to practice more anticipatory leadership. And it's funny, actually, Beth works for me today, 18 years later. And so she kept repeating that term. And it started. It got me thinking about those 1970s Heinz commercials where Carly Simon's hit Anticipation was playing and the ketchup was slowly flowing out of the bottle. So what Beth has embodied and what I tried to embody is anticipatory leaders, I think, do three things really well. So they're. They're absolutely and relentlessly fascinated with the future. And in that sense of the future is so strong, it's as if others around them experience the future alive and present today. So thinking about, yeah, I always try to think about what are the. What are five things that can happen we do this? And what are the five things that can happen or how this is going to play out? They have the ability, they, they also, secondly, have the ability to think systemically. So I think all too often we get our blinders on. So I'm the cfo. I think about finance or on the strategy person, I think about growth. So I think it's important just to think about what are all the forces shaping us from the outside, and then how are we realistically telling the truth about what's going on inside our organization? I think all too often. And the one, the great story for me personally was I wanted to play college basketball. And so I'm in my junior high school. My dad, he's like, I don't think that's going to happen for you. I was like, no, I think it's still possible. He goes, well, you've gotten cut from the basketball team. Freshman, sophomore, junior year. He goes, I don't think you're playing college basketball anywhere, so you're going to have to have another plan. I think in health care, we sometimes inflate our view of ourselves as executives, CEOs, or the organization. And it's important just to tell ourselves the truth. And then the final piece, and the most important piece is anticipatory leaders can mobilize and motivate others to not only see what they're seeing, but to take action. So they're both educators and action takers. And so, you know, for people like Beth, I think this leadership skill comes naturally into so many for me. So for some of us, and for me, it's. I need to practice it I need support from others on the team. Had an executive coach on and off for 18 years. So having apps really working on it as a skill. You know, I always try to remind myself Tiger woods has coaches, so CEOs need coaches too. But that anticipatory leadership thing is, I think, a much needed and underrated leadership trait.
- [18:26]
Chris Sosa
Yeah, I would agree. I think that's a wonderful insight, especially the last piece of that where if you can find and work with leaders who really motivate you to do something or just be a better person and employee, et cetera, that's really valuable. And if you can become that, that's a wonderful cycle that just perpetuates for sure. Peter, thank you so much for all your insights and your time. I think this conversation went in directions that I didn't anticipate, but I think that's a great thing. I think our audience is going to love that too. And just learning about leadership in general from your perspective. Thank you again for your time.
- [19:02]
Peter Banko
Yeah. Thank you, Chris.