Why did Centura Health break up? The former CEO has an answer.

The breakup of Centura Health, the joint venture between CommonSpirit Health and AdventHealth, is the biggest news in the Colorado hospital market in decades. But it’s also still a mystery.

Even as ad campaigns roll out announcing that the respective systems’ Centura hospitals will be rebranding to their parent companies’ names, the watching public has yet to hear a good reason for what was behind the breakup — or “disaffiliation,” as the companies prefer.

So, we here at The Sun decided to ask the boss — former Centura CEO now turned CommonSpirit division president Peter Banko — to see if he would tell us. (Banko oversees CommonSpirit’s hospitals in Colorado, Kansas and Utah.)

We popped the question in the middle of a wide-ranging interview that also…