HJNO Jan/Feb 2025

HEALTHCARE JOURNAL OF NEW ORLEANS I  JAN / FEB 2025 9 ONE on ONE Phyllis LeBlanc Peoples President and CEO Terrebonne General Health System Phyllis LeBlanc Peoples has served as the president and CEO of Terrebonne General Health System since 2003. She is a native of Houma and has worked in healthcare administration for over 28 years. Peoples served as the Louisiana Hospital Association (LHA) Board of Trustees chair from July 2019 to July 2021. She is also a member of the LHA Trust Funds Board. She served as a member of the American Hospital Association Regional Policy Board 7 and has been a member of the American College of Healthcare Executives since 2001, completing a two-year term as president of the Louisiana Chapter of Healthcare Executives. Peoples earned a bachelor’s degree in nursing from the University of Southwestern Louisiana and two master’s degrees from Valdosta State University in administration and education, as well as a master’s degree in healthcare administration and doctoral studies from Tulane University. Dianne Hartley, Editor Thank you for taking the time to meet today. You've been CEO of Terrebonne General for over 20 years — what an amazing run. What has changed for over those years? Phyllis LeBlanc Peoples Terrebonne General has been in our community since 1954. We are very excited about all the things we've been able to achieve in 70 years — it began as a small organization. And, yes, I've been in the CEO role for 22 years, so I've had the opportunity to watch us continue to grow. All the people who had it for the first 50 years were amazing, and I kind of feel responsible for the time that I've been in this role. Terrebonne General is unique in that we definitely have a culture that's very much a family culture. We're a Cajun culture here, and everybody treats everybody as if they were caring for their family. We’ve got a lot of generational people who work here. Grandfathers, fathers, and now the kids are starting to come back; that tells you how old I'm getting because I'm seeing doctors who are third genera- tion who are coming back to our organi- zation to work, and it's definitely amazing. Everybody goes off to get trained and goes to school throughout the entire nation, but home is unique in that it brings family together and then everybody tends to want to come home and raise their family here. We're state-of-the-art. The care is amaz- ing, and our docs and people still talk. They talk rather than just put things in a com- puter. When you take care of a patient, they know you. They're going to see you at the grocery store, in town; and they’re from the old school that say, "That's my doc, that's my guy." So, when our family practice physi- cians refer to a specialist, they talk through it because they know that they're going to talk to that person again or see them in a social way — or in not only a social way, but in a care way or in the school system with the kids. It's an amazing, unique thing that we're very proud of. Editor What has changed for you in two decades as CEO? Peoples Well, I've aged a lot — that's what's changed. I started young, but I've always been in healthcare. I started as a nurse and went back to graduate school a couple of times and then went on to my doctorate. I grew up in Houma and then moved away. That’s what we don't want our young people to do, but I couldn't wait to get out of town. I went away, got married, and had a family. And then you start to miss family. You want your kids to be raised with their grandparents and things like that, so we tend to come back to the area. The opportunity is when you look at an