Terry Leach, RN, Esq.

Health Policy Manager

 

Terry Leach is a health attorney and registered nurse who served as the UC Office of the President’s health policy manager, and founder and executive director of the UC Center for Health Quality and Innovation until her recent retirement from full-time employment with UC. As Executive Director, she supported innovations at UC Health campuses that improve quality, advance population health and lower costs throughout UC Health. To create a system-wide approach to performance improvement, she created an infrastructure of experts from throughout the UC system to identify best practices and to create a culture of deliberate improvement throughout UC. With resources provided by the five academic medical centers and the Office of Risk Services, she designed funding rounds to solicit projects and future innovation leaders to implement these practices to effectuate the triple Aim at UC Health. Her team has managed over 50 CHQI-funded projects and a career leadership track.

Ms. Leach had been a primary point of contact for public and private payers on matters of quality improvement and efficiency and was appointed by Secretary Diana Dooley of the California Department of Health Services to co-chair a taskforce designed to redesign health care in California with the ultimate objective of achieving payment reform . She has worked as a health policy consultant for the California State Senate and taught health policy at the University of Minnesota in the School of Public Health. She has served as the Executive Director of the Rockridge Institute, a framing institute founded by UC Berkeley professor George Lakoff and has also managed or served as the director of strategy for several political campaigns, including a statewide campaign.

Ms. Leach has a law degree from UC Berkeley Boalt Hall School of Law, a master’s degree in fine arts from Bennington College in Vermont, and a bachelor’s degree in nursing with a minor in Spanish from California State University, Sacramento. Terry’s early nursing career focused on prevention of disease and helping Spanish-speaking patients learn how to care for complex medical conditions at home. She has three adult children, and serves as the Vice Chair of one of the oldest FQHCs in California, in addition to consulting for healthcare organizations on innovation and performance improvement.