Leon L. Haley Jr., MD, MHSA, CPE, FACEP, CEO of UF Health Jacksonville and dean of the University of Florida College of Medicine – Jacksonville, passed away unexpectedly Saturday, July 24, 2021. Haley, 56, was a strong, inspirational leader and beloved son, father, friend and colleague.
In addition to serving as CEO and dean, Haley was a UF professor of emergency medicine and vice president for health affairs for the University of Florida. He assumed his UF roles in January 2017 and became CEO of UF Health Jacksonville in January 2018.
Haley rose up the academic ranks to become professor of emergency medicine at Emory University, where he excelled as a clinician, scholar and administrator. At Grady Memorial Hospital, Emory’s safety-net hospital, Haley assumed increasing responsibilities for all faculty matters and excelled in his role as executive associate dean for clinical affairs.
In addition to his roles as a professor of emergency medicine and executive associate dean at Emory, Haley served as chief medical officer of the Emory Medical Care Foundation in Atlanta. He formerly served as deputy senior vice president of medical affairs, chief of emergency medicine for Grady Health System and vice chair of emergency medicine at Emory University.
Prior to his positions at Grady and Emory, Haley was a senior staff physician at the Henry Ford Health System in Detroit.
Haley completed his undergraduate degree from Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island. He earned his medical degree from the University of Pittsburgh and his master’s degree in health services administration from the University of Michigan. Haley completed his residency in emergency medicine at the Henry Ford Health System, serving a year as chief resident.
Haley’s primary academic interest has been identifying and evaluating strategies to enhance the delivery of high-quality emergency care to large numbers of patients in the emergency room setting. He is credited with successfully implementing a rapid medical evaluation process in the Grady Memorial Hospital emergency room that resulted in, among other things, decreasing the number of patients leaving without being seen by 50%, decreasing the time for patients to see an emergency medicine provider by 45 minutes and reducing the length of stay for the lowest-acuity patients by three hours.
Haley completed the Woodruff Leadership Program at Emory University and a fellowship for the National Association of Public Hospital Program. He was funded by the Department of Defense, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the Healthcare Foundation of Georgia. Dr. Haley served on the state of Georgia’s Trauma Network Commission as an appointee of the Georgia lieutenant governor.