Stallone: The right man at the right time

Tompkins Trust Company, in partnership with the Tompkins County Chamber of Commerce, recently named Dr. Martin Stallone, president and CEO of Cayuga Health System, as the April 2021 recipient of the Community Hero of the Month Award, which recognizes individuals from Tompkins County who have significantly impacted our community.

As Tompkins Weekly covered previously, the awards launched last month, with initial recipients being county officials who have helped to lead the fight against COVID-19. Stallone’s win falls into a similar theme, as Cayuga Health has been invaluable in the county’s handling of the pandemic.

According to a recent press release, Stallone has 17 years of experience in the health care industry and was recognized for “his leadership of Cayuga Health System during a global health pandemic as well as for the numerous contributions the system has made to the community throughout the COVID-19 public health emergency.”

While the pandemic was unexpected and tumultuous for Stallone, as it was for many in the county, he had plenty of past experience to lean on, as he explained. Back in 1998, he was commissioned out of the Cornell Air Force ROTC program to join the Air National Guard. There, he worked as a health care administrator, which he said greatly influenced his decision to pursue his doctorate and master’s.

In 2006, he transitioned from the Medical Service Corps to the Medical Corps as a flight surgeon. Four years after leaving active duty in 2009, he became a medical group commander in Syracuse at the 174th Attack Wing. And in 2019, he became the New York state air surgeon. Now, he’s the senior medical adviser to the adjutant general and just celebrated his 22nd anniversary as part of the National Guard. He resides in Lansing with his wife, Ami, and their six sons.

Stallone explained how his military experience led him to Cayuga Health.

“When I was coming off active duty in 2009, I was looking for a way to use my managerial and clinical abilities,” Stallone said. “And it was accidental, but I found Cayuga Health System, then Cayuga Medical Center, and they were starting a hospitalist program and looking for a decision, administrative, practicing leader, and I applied and got that job. And so, we moved back to Tompkins County in July of 2009. And we’ve been living here since.”

Once at Cayuga Health, Stallone said he approached his role with humility, stemming from the idea that “no individual in and of themselves has the ability to deliver the health care product that is needed and wanted.”

“It’s a team sport,” Stallone said. “It involves a lot of people sharing a vision of what health care can and should be. And that’s the way I’ve approached this position, that every role is critical, we all share the success, we’re all committed to making improvements where they’re necessary, and it is a work in progress. It is a horizon that we’re chasing; it is not a destination to reach.”

That commitment was especially important during the pandemic, Stallone said. As he explained, prior to the pandemic, most of the challenges he and others at Cayuga Health faced were fixed, with a sense of normalcy. But the pandemic changed that and challenged many basic premises of managing a health care organization.

Still, a positive change that Stallone has seen is that Cayuga Health has had to work with far more organizations and groups now than pre-pandemic, which he said has been beneficial for everyone involved.

“It is heartening, what we were able to accomplish as a community with organizations cooperating around these shared objectives that were new for all of us,” he said. “And so, that was one of the bright points about this experience, this otherwise horrible experience, is that we’ve proven that we can accomplish so much when we put our collective attention behind it, our collective hearts behind it.”

Some of the work Cayuga Health has done in the past year includes coordinating the county’s pandemic response along with other county leaders, coordinating one of the highest-capacity testing operations in the state, setting up a high-capacity vaccine clinic and more. Additionally, Stallone supported a provider mission to New York City last spring, contributing to the state’s response to the pandemic.

Throughout all these efforts, Stallone said his military background greatly prepared him for whatever the pandemic had in store.

“The idea of mobilizing and deploying capabilities to new assignments in an environment that is uncertain and volatile, that is what the military does, and so, I appreciated the experience I had in planning and being part of military operations that, in some ways, were similar to what we faced during the pandemic,” he said.

In regard to winning the Hero of the Month Award, Stallone said he was “embarrassed to be singled out” because he sees all of the successes from the past year as the result of group efforts, not just himself.

“While I appreciate the sentiment, I think that this award, if it could be divided up and given to the hundreds of people who supported the community, that would probably be a better idea,” he said. “The success was generated by the doctors, the nurses and the staff at Cayuga Health System who went so far out of their way. I felt unworthy to receive the award. But in their honor, I will reflect the credit onto them.”

Martin extended his thanks to the hospital Board of Directors and leadership team and expressed his immense gratitude to his family for being so supportive during this entire journey.

“Even when I was not able to decompress, they were a wonderful support system and were very understanding when we had to work double overtime through weekends, without any vacation time for a year, while the boys were at home out of school,” Stallone said. “So, they really did support me greatly.”

As for what lies in the future, Stallone said he’s optimistic for the county’s overall recovery from the pandemic, especially now that vaccines have opened up to ages 16 and up and Cayuga Health alone has vaccinated 50,000 people. In the coming months, Stallone said he wants to see the county resume preventative and outpatient care, which was put on hold during the pandemic.

“I think we are aware that a lot of community members have put off addressing health concerns, and we are in the process of making sure people understand our system is safe to engage [with] and that we want to be the system of choice for people who are reengaging around their health and wellness,” he said.