“You have to be able to care for the whole person and everything they need along their healthcare journey.”
Pete McCanna
Chief Executive Officer, Baylor Scott & White Health
As CEO of Baylor Scott & White Health, Peter (Pete) McCanna is focused on empowering customers to live well by reimagining traditional healthcare—offering more convenient, personalized, and informed experiences. He is leading Baylor Scott & White’s customer-centric transformation by bringing together the system’s 57,000 team members around a common goal to keep people healthy and feeling connected and supported.
Before becoming CEO, Pete served as the health system’s president. In that role, he drove operational excellence, strengthened clinical alignment, scaled the system’s digital health platform, MyBSWHealth, and deepened academic partnerships.
Pete has nearly 40 years of industry experience. As executive vice president and chief operating officer at Northwestern Medicine, he exceeded targets for operating revenue, quality, patient experience, and employee engagement, making it one of the top 10 academic health centers in the country.
Known as a thoughtful and innovative leader, Pete formerly served as chief financial officer at New Mexico-based Presbyterian Healthcare Services and the University of Colorado Hospital.
Passionate about transforming healthcare, Pete was named one of Modern Healthcare’s “100 Most Influential People in Healthcare.”
Driven by a deep sense of purpose, Pete currently serves as the inaugural board chair of Longitude Health, an innovative healthcare collaborative, and as a board member of University of Michigan Health, Texas Hospital Association, and Catholic Extension. He holds a master’s degree in Public Affairs at the University of Texas at Austin and a bachelor’s degree in English from the University of Michigan.
Baylor Scott & White Health is the largest not-for-profit health system in the state of Texas. It includes 52 hospitals, more than 1,300 access points, a health plan, a research institute, and an accountable care organization, plus Levanto—a company offering digitally-enabled health solutions—and 3 million customers connected through MyBSWHealth.
Thought leadership
A diverse skill set
“The intersection of consumerism and new technological tools demands a new destination for healthcare where the customer must be at the center.”
Leading Transformation Through Empowered Patients and Employees
"You’ve got to empower employees, they have to feel the purpose, and they have to have the tools and the capabilities to be able to eliminate those pain points for a customer."
Dallas Regional Chamber: Frontline healthcare heroes inspire me
Speaking about COVID: “If we can solve these problems on the fly, we can do anything, and I think that’s a positive platform to work from.”
In the media
What a paper route taught Baylor Scott & White's CEO about business
Baylor Scott & White expands in Texas with joint ownership of 41 urgent care clinics
Baylor’s partner in the venture, NextCare, will continue to manage the clinics
Educating within: How Baylor Scott & White is using training to confront staffing issues
The hospital system started a free continuing education program for employees to lower barriers to professional development