Gil Peri Speaks on Children’s Wisconsin

Expand

Photo by Tom Jenz

Gil Peri - Children's Hospital of Wisconsin

Gil Peri, president and CEO of Children's Hospital of Wisconsin

Mary was 10 years old when the pain in her legs, hips, and jaw became too much to ignore. She had cancer. What followed was two and a half years of over 20 spinal taps, two rounds of hair loss, and long stretches away from school and friends. Through the ordeal, her care team at the Children's Wisconsin MACC Fund Center for Cancer and Blood Disorders never let go. When her treatment finally ended, Mary rang the hospital's ceremonial bell and threw a dance party with her family alongside the care team who had supported her.

Then there's Raynah, an active, easygoing 11-year-old. What her family thought was a mild illness turned, almost overnight, into something terrifying when she lost the ability to move or speak. Doctors found a massive, life-threatening infection pressing on her brain. Children's Wisconsin's neurosciences team rushed her into emergency surgery. Their speed and precision saved her life and gave Raynah back her voice.

Stories like these are why Children's Wisconsin exists. As Wisconsin's only independent health system devoted entirely to children, it is built, staff by staff, around one idea. Kids are not small adults. Every doctor, nurse, and caregiver trains specifically for the physical and emotional realities of growing bodies and frightened minds. The hospital's spaces are designed to soften fear through kid-friendly rooms and emotional support systems, care that wraps around the entire family, not just the patient.

That mission has deep roots. On March 16, 1894, seven determined women volunteers raised enough money to rent a small cottage with 10 beds on Brady Street in Milwaukee. They had one purpose, caring for the immigrant children the city's hospitals were failing. It was the first hospital in Wisconsin dedicated solely to kids.

That legacy now lives inside the many patient towers and clinics throughout Wisconsin, led today by Gil Peri, Children’s Wisconsin’s president and CEO. I met him in a conference room with a view of one of the campuses he oversees. Peri is a big presence, tall, quick-witted, and magnetic when he talks. But it took only a few minutes of conversation to see past the executive title to what really drives him. He loves these kids, passionately and without pretense.

The Road to Hospital Management

Gil Peri grew up in Colorado and Florida in a close-knit family. He has an identical twin brother and a younger brother. Peri attended grade school and middle school in Colorado before his father’s job took the family to Fort Lauderdale. He finished high school in Florida and went on to the University of South Florida in Tampa.

Originally, Peri thought he would become a physical therapist. Then a career assessment sent him in another direction. A counselor suggested he explore the university’s new College of Public Health and Health Administration. He audited an epidemiology class, talked with the dean and realized that his interests lay beyond treating individual patients.

“The opportunity to impact groups of people or communities is really where I found a passion,” he said.

After graduate school, Peri joined an adult health system in Tampa, starting in an entry-level position and eventually managing ambulatory and outpatient centers. Then came a pivotal moment in his career. The hospital president, impressed with Peri’s leadership, asked him to take over surgery and radiology, two of the hospital’s largest operations.

That experience taught Peri an important lesson about leadership. Management skills can travel from one setting to another.

“When you have certain leadership skills, if you know how to lead and motivate and have crucial conversations, those skills can transfer so well,” he told me.

Yet his eventual interest in children's health care was rooted in a much more personal experience. When Peri’s younger brother was in high school, he was pushed down a flight of stairs and developed a serious spinal condition. A specialist at the University of Miami recommended surgery, but the family sought another opinion from a pediatric surgeon in Orlando. The surgeon had treated thousands of similar cases and advised against surgery. Instead, Peri’s brother recovered over time, although he was told he could never again play contact sports.

Peri had seen firsthand what specialized pediatric expertise could mean for a child and his family. From that point on, he knew where his career was headed. “I said, one day I’m going to work at a children’s hospital.”

As time went on, he built that ambitious career at children’s hospitals across the country. At Nationwide Children’s in Columbus, Ohio, he worked in strategy and growth before moving to Children’s Colorado, where he helped expand its primary service area to six states.

A mentor there told Peri that if he wanted to become a CEO, he needed to run a hospital and not simply develop strategy. That opportunity came in Connecticut, where he became president of a small children’s hospital facing significant financial and competitive challenges. Under his leadership, the organization strengthened its culture and operations and increased its cash reserves from 85 days to 185 days.

Peri later became president of Riley Children’s in Indiana, part of the larger IU Health system. The experience gave him another perspective on leading a children’s hospital within a major adult health system.

Then Children’s Wisconsin came calling. When Peggy Troy announced her retirement after 15 years as CEO, Peri was recruited as her successor. Arriving in 2024, he inherited what he calls “a jewel of the community,” and an institution with 132 years of history.

Now 52, Peri sees his role as both steward and builder of Children’s Wisconsin. “We’re just getting started,” he said.

How would you describe the purpose and the function of children's Wisconsin?

The purpose of Children's Wisconsin is to serve all kids in the state of Wisconsin from prevention all the way to the most complex care. We are the only health system in the state focused 100% on kids. We feel they need a dedicated health system that wakes up every day thinking about kids. We have over 800 people that work in prevention and early detection. For example, car seat safety, bike helmet safety, gun violence prevention, mental and behavioral health in schools. Health navigators help people coordinate care, all these services that we call community engagement in order to prevent injury and disease. When you come here, you get specialists, 70 specialties and 21 locations of primary care. As an example, we not only have a cardiologist, we have a cardiologist who's specializes in adult general heart or electrophysiology.

How many employees are there altogether? 

About 8,000 team members who have dedicated their professional lives to kids. That includes our physicians and Advanced Practice Providers. 

Impressive. You lead this team of nearly 8,000 members. What is your management style? 

I am a team first leader, enabling our teams to be at their best, making sure we have a balance of strong culture and accountability at the same time. That's kind of my leadership style. 

So what exactly is this team culture concept?

The idea is that no matter what role the 8,000 team members play, they are still all team members. Every one of us is accountable for helping that child get released from the hospital. Here is an instance. There was a young girl who was fighting cancer, and we cured her. We have a bell ringing ceremony, which means when they ring the bell, they're cancer free. They're in remission. Oh, I love that. So usually we do the ceremony in the lobby and there's usually four or five family members and a handful of staff. This girl was here for an extended period of time, and she was very gregarious, and everyone loved her. And this is what I mean by one team. Who attended her release? Of course, her clinical team, physicians and nurses and the unit support team, et cetera. But who else was there? Environmental Services. The HR person, the Valet, and the barista from the cafe. We had all kinds of team members there. Right now, I am wearing the One Team T Shirt. Every Friday, we wear these T shirts. I've never missed a Friday. I am wearing it today because it's a Team Appreciation Day. The idea is that when we work together, we create connections that support wellbeing. So that's the concept behind “one team.” Children's Wisconsin is advancing its services across the continuum of care for primary specialty and hospital care to mental and behavioral health and to community-based services. 

Can you comment on these various services? 

We'll start off with the prevention and early detection services. Mental and behavioral health is a big challenge for kids. One in five kids across the country has a mental and behavioral health diagnosis, and about half of those kids never get services. That's a national statistic. At Children's Wisconsin, we know the importance of whole child healthcare. It's not just the medical or surgical interventions that are necessary. You have to think about the whole child - their mental and behavioral health, their dental and physical health. This only happens with support and philanthropy, The Yubuki Family Foundation was really helpful in this space. They gave us a significant donation to help us create a mental and behavioral health program that led the country. We embedded mental health professionals in every one of our primary care centers. We have 21 centers, and every one has a mental behavior health therapist in the clinic. 

How do your mental health professionals handle a kid with mental challenges?

The kid walks in, and typically, they turn to the right to go to the medical, see their pediatrician. If that kid turns to the left, they meet mental health professionals. The parents are often involved in the conversations, or it might be just the kid. These mental health professionals are able to connect with kids early and often before crisis happens. They can identify issues such as depression, anxiety, and suicide aviation before they exacerbate. If a kid has a significant mental health crisis, you can go to one of our mental and behavioral health walk-in clinics, one in Milwaukee, one in Kenosha, and one in Green Bay. It's like an emergency department for mental health. 

Tell me more about your clinical care.

We have all the things you would expect at a Child's Hospital, all the medical and surgical interventions, and we have some of the best and brightest physicians who not only provide clinical care, but they write the book, meaning they conduct research and teach medical students. Seventy percent of the pediatric experts in the state are trained here at Children's Wisconsin. So our physicians not only care for kids, but they also teach the next generation, and then they do research because they're never satisfied with the current offerings. They want to continue to always get better. We attract people who want to do research at the Medical College of Wisconsin, which is a great academic and education partner in the field of pediatrics. 

Why do children need a separate medical facility? Aren't their health issues similar to adults? 

No. Children are not small adults from a healthcare perspective. There's a couple of reasons. One is when a child has a need, there's a different set of approaches that the child needs in order to get well. If a child comes in for a procedure, they're going to need a different type of technology to be able to get scans. They're going to need a different type of implant potentially, much smaller. So the surgeon not only becomes board-certified in their specialty, but they go for additional training in pediatrics in order to work on these kids. Sometimes, our heart surgeons are literally doing surgery on a brain the size of a walnut. It's a different level of expertise. Child life specialists work with the child to make it a seamless experience. They teach them about our MRI machines, and they're big machines and they're scary. Without sedating the child, we can have a child life specialist do calming support exercises. They build rapport really easily. And guess what? That kid gets an MRI without sedation. And so it's technology. It's people that are different, and the supplies and implants are different. And the most important part is we stay connected with the kid. You have a medical home here. Until you transition to adult care, we've got you. If you have a need, we're the only place in the whole state that can say yes to everything that you need. 

You have child advocacy centers all over Wisconsin. What goes on there? 

In those locations, we have a contract with the state to provide support for abused and for collected children. These kids are often the most vulnerable kids. We also offer foster care and adoption center for the services for the state of Wisconsin. Most people don't know that. And so when vulnerable kids have a need, they're not going to always come to Milwaukee for those services. That's why we have the outreach of those sites. We have professionals who are trained to not only safely receive them, but to do medical exams, and to work with authorities in making sure that those kids have a safe place.