Leona M. Butler is Chief Executive Officer of Santa Clara Family Health Plan. She arrived in 1997, within months of SCFHP’s startup. Mrs. Butler has guided the plan to a dominant position in the Santa Clara County market while advocating for universal health insurance coverage for all Californians.

Mrs. Butler is a leader of the Children’s Health Initiative (CHI), a community-based outreach and enrollment program, and developed and administers Healthy Kids, a locally funded insurance plan. These programs, whose mission is to provide health insurance for every child in Santa Clara County, provide coverage to children who do not qualify for public insurance. The programs, the first of their kind in the nation, were created by a public-private partnership that included SCFHP.

Additionally, Mrs. Butler has been actively involved in the Healthy Families program since its inception, and has worked to ensure that SCFHP be designated each year as the community provider plan for Santa Clara County. Mrs. Butler served on the Healthy Families Advisory Panel from 1998 to 2001.

Previously, as CEO of the Health Plan of San Joaquin, Mrs. Butler was responsible for designing the Health Plan, obtaining its Knox-Keene license, contracting with the Department of Health Services, and implementing all aspects of the Health Plan, which had a membership of more than 48,000.

As Vice President for Provider Affairs at Blue Cross of California, Mrs. Butler was responsible for the conception, design and implementation of the Prudent Buyer plan, the first large PPO in the State, and for designing and administering provider contracting for California Care.

Mrs. Butler spent three years with the California Legislature as the chief staff person on the Medi-Cal program during a time of major Medi-Cal reform, and organized and administered a large medical group in San Francisco, now known as the California Pacific Medical Group.

Mrs. Butler’s health care experience started at the University of California San Francisco Medical Center where she held a variety of positions, starting as an analyst for the Chancellor and culminating as Principal Investigator for a grant to investigate ways to educate the public via television news.

Awards

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