David Banks is about five weeks into his new role as president and CEO of Altamonte Springs, Fla.-based AdventHealth, bringing three decades of experience with the organization.
Prior to his current role, Mr. Banks served as group CEO for the primary health division and the multi-state division of AdventHealth, overseeing more than 20 campuses in eight states and three regional partnerships. He has also served as AdventHealth’s chief strategy officer, with significant involvement in the development and ongoing execution of Vision 2030 — the system’s 10-year strategy and business plan.
Mr. Banks told Becker’s he’s excited about AdventHealth’s path forward and has had a smooth transition into the CEO role. He succeeds Terry Shaw, who announced his retirement in December after 40 years with AdventHealth, including nearly a decade at the helm.
“The nice thing about an internal transition is I’ve been working very closely with Terry Shaw,” he said. “That’s allowed us to almost feel like a baton hand-off in a relay race. It’s allowed us to keep moving in the direction we were going.”
Mr. Banks discussed his strategic priorities, the organization’s approach to addressing current industry headwinds and AdventHealth’s innovation efforts.
Editor’s note: Responses have been lightly edited for clarity and length.
Question: What’s one strategic priority you’re focused on in your first year as CEO that you believe will drive the greatest impact across AdventHealth?
David Banks: We’ve made a brand promise to our communities to provide healthcare that helps them feel whole. So our focus is on the quality of care we deliver, the experience they have with that care. And then we’re very focused on building out complete networks of care, and that includes strong, robust investments in primary care and digital tools that help with patient navigation. Additionally, we’re continuing to build out hospital assets — so strong network builds, high focus on the quality of care that’s being delivered and the experience of our patients who are receiving that care.
Q: How are you building on the momentum of AdventHealth’s Vision 2030 strategic plan to address current industry headwinds while advancing long-term goals?
DB: What’s fun about coming out of the strategy role is you’re always asking yourself one of two questions: What is it we’re trying to do, and what headwinds do we need to be prepared for? When I think of the headwinds, one constant question for us is ensuring that we are focused on delivering the highest value care possible. Healthcare is expensive, access can be challenging and we’re always looking to make sure that we are focused in those areas.
The first 100 days of the new administration has had a lot of focus on healthcare and asking a lot of the questions that you would expect an incoming administration to ask around Medicare and Medicaid, and all of the programs that go with those. We have made some investments in some of the value-based programs through CMS; we’re watching those very closely.
Medicaid funding has received a lot of attention at a federal and state level, and we’re in nine states, so we’re tracking nine conversations. And AdventHealth is in a very stable place, and so we’re building out our scenarios of what could occur in Florida or Kansas or Colorado, and we’ll be ready for whatever changes come. Our focus is always to make sure that we are prepared to continue to deliver care to the patients we serve and be ready to make whatever adjustments we need to make in terms of reimbursement or eligibility criteria, as the state and the federal government figure out what they want to do next.
Q: What’s one specific approach you’re using to strengthen workforce culture and engagement across such a large organization?
DB: We started a new set of team member promises. We stepped back and looked at the foundational level of the commitments we were making to our team — and put those into six promises around benefits and pay and opportunities for educational subsidies. And we have successfully rolled that out across the entirety of the company, and I’m so glad we did, because that is paying big benefits.
We’ve also been able to see our turnover come way down, and it’s a result of focusing on what matters most to our team members. We know if they don’t feel whole, there’s no way for them to be ready to serve our patients. So that’s been a focus, and I’ve been very happy with the outcome and results we have seen there.
The other thing we’ve done is really become much more strategic in the investments in our own university, AdventHealth University, but also in the colleges and community colleges, and programs in every community we’re in. We have many partnerships now to create a more robust pipeline — not just for nurses, but also care techs, medical assistants, CRNAs, all types of professionals. And we’re seeing very good success building pipelines through those sources as well.
Q: Where do you see the most immediate opportunity for innovation in care delivery, and how are you acting on it?
DB: We’ve seen innovation take off in two interesting places. One is we’re getting ready to do — all the way across our full company — smart rooms inside of our hospitals that will bring a whole new set of technologies into the patient room that we think will fundamentally change our staff’s experience, our physician providers’ experience, as well as the experience of our patients and their families. It allows for a much more robust exchange of information, telecare and other clinical supportive elements, and we’re very excited about that. That’ll go live for us in 2026.
We’ve also done a lot with ambient listening for our physicians in terms of their transcription. It’s probably been the single most uniformly satisfying thing we’ve done for our doctors. It’s cut their documentation time down by one to two hours a day, and it’s had some pretty dramatic impacts on their quality of life — their ability to get home at a reasonable time after a full workday.
We have about 80 projects in the queue that really leverage next-gen tech or AI. Those would be two, though — that one very well established — and our smart rooms that will roll out in 2026.
In some way, hospital rooms have kind of been the same for a long time. And the ability to change what happens inside the room — from a safety, engagement, clinical monitoring and telecare perspective — it’ll be really interesting to see how that improves all those elements: from experience, safety, quality care, as well as family member engagement. And we’re excited to see that.
Q: Anything you’d like to expand on or add?
DB: I’ve been a part of AdventHealth for 31 years, and so I came up through the clinical side. I started my career as a psychiatric social worker, ended up running behavioral health units, and then freestanding psych hospitals and acute care hospitals. And it’s such a blessing to grow up inside of an organization, and I’m very committed to the Vision 2030 process.
We have specifically focused around preeminence in faith-based, consumer-focused clinical care. And I’m motivated by the challenge to help every patient we serve to feel whole. That’s a tough brand promise to hit, because wholeness is something that’s defined by the patient or the end user. We don’t always know what that thing will be, but our teams are committed to not only delivering safe, quality care, but doing it in a way that allows the person to be seen and not have healthcare feel like a transaction.
Healthcare consumers, first and foremost, want their clinical problem solved. And they’re willing, oftentimes, to overlook inconvenience or other sorts of things that can happen in a typical healthcare experience. Our goal is to get it right first clinically, but we also never want a patient to feel like they had to make a trade-off: “Well, you saved my life, but nothing else was great.” We want them to feel great about the entire experience — mind, body and spirit. I’m really motivated by that “feel whole promise.”
