Leslie Barden, FACHE, Chief Executive Officer
Leslie Barden joined SAHA in August 2023 as its current CEO following the retirement of long-time leader Bill Bedsole. She comes to SAHA bringing a rich array of experience in strategy, business development and growth, transformation to create new models of care focusing on improving population health based on new payment models, and most importantly to this role, many years forming and leading productive partnerships.
Barden has been working in healthcare on the provider side since 1986 when she started at United Health Services in Binghamton, NY as an Administrative Resident for her graduate work at Xavier University. She grew professionally at UHS serving the organization for over 15 years and advancing into executive leadership. She also served as an executive at Methodist Health in Dallas, VHA (now Vizient), Blaze Advisors (now Alera Health), and St. Peter’s Health Partners a member of Trinity Health. While at St. Peter’s Health Partners, she simultaneously held the role as Chief Strategy Officer as well as CEO of the Innovative Health Alliance of NY (IHANY) which is a clinically integrated network with ACO level contracts with Medicare, Medicare Advantage, Medicaid, and commercial payers.
She is passionate about providers transforming care to create stronger HEALTH based on a whole person model of care supported by a changed business model in healthcare. But she is very much in tune with the business drivers for health care providers and the balancing act of needing to sustain themselves in a fee for service payment environment while effectively leading new models of value based care. This deep appreciation for the business realities of today and how they are changing serves her well in leading the SAHA members through knowledge sharing, networking, collaboration, and aggregation.
She holds an undergraduate degree in biology from St. John Fisher University in Rochester, NY, and a graduate degree in health administration from Xavier University in Cincinnati, OH. She is a Fellow in the American College of Healthcare Executives where she has been an active participant in the Mentorship program for ACHE of North Texas. Her husband John is a CPA and dean at the University of Texas at Dallas, and they have three adult children.
