Thomas Leyden, MBA

Tom Leyden is the Director of the BCBSM Value Partnerships Program and has over 25 years of healthcare experience in a variety of areas including clinical program development and practice transformation, value-based reimbursement, and performance improvement consulting. He oversees a portfolio of over 50 statewide quality improvement programs that are tied to over a half billion dollars in annual value-based reimbursement opportunities for Michigan’s physician and hospital community. Through the Value Partnerships Program, BCBSM works collaboratively with Michigan’s acute-care hospitals and with 20,000 primary care physicians and specialists. Value Partnerships was designed to engage the Michigan provider community to create an innovative quality-based approach to reward the transformation of health care via a value-based-reimbursement model. Value Partnerships programs are internationally recognized, having been profiled in over 35 countries on five continents and having received multiple national awards. Prior to joining Blue Cross in 2007, Tom served as Vice President at MPRO, Michigan’s federally designated quality improvement organization. Previously Tom worked as a consultant for Ernst & Young's Health Care Consulting Division. Tom has presented on a wide variety of healthcare topics at the statewide, national, and international levels for forums as diverse as the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, American Hospital Association, Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, Healthcare Financial Management Association, International Consortium for Health Outcomes Measurement, National Institute for Health Care Management and Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, among others. In addition, Tom has been published in a variety of peer-reviewed literature including the American Journal of Managed Care, the Harvard Business Review, and the New England Journal of Medicine Catalyst Innovations in Care Delivery. Tom was the national recipient of the Primary Care Community Leadership award from the Primary Care Collaborative in 2020. Mr. Leyden received his BA from Michigan State University and his MBA from Wayne State University.