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Michael F. Walsh has more than 30 years of experience in the healthcare industry. A native of County Mayo, Ireland, he moved to the United States in 1971, rose rapidly in the ranks of the business world and has been President and CEO of DeCare Dental and its family of companies since 1987.
Since taking the helm of DeCare, Walsh created substantial growth in membership, services and revenue, positioning the organization as a national leader in the dental benefits industry.
Under his tenure, total managed revenues of the organization increased to $1.01 billion in 2006 from $637 million in 2001. In 1989 the organization served .6 million members. Today, 3.9 million individuals (at more than 21,000 employer groups) are served under the DeCare umbrella across the nation.
Faced with a changing dental benefits landscape and intense competition from significantly larger, national health insurance companies, Walsh developed an aggressive business strategy to diversify and expand DeCare's dental business across the United States. Under his leadership, DeCare has established relationships with some of the leading medical and life insurance carriers in the United States.
In 1998, Walsh established a software development company, DeCare Systems Ireland (DSI), in Cork, to support DeCare and its family of companies. The software company has expanded to provide Web-based software solutions to external clients including Avon, MasterCard International and others. In 1999 Walsh established a claims processing center in County Mayo, Ireland, which currently processes approximately 25,000 dental claims a day from DeCare's U.S business.
Prior to his role at DeCare, Walsh worked as an Assistant Vice President for the Blue Cross Association in Chicago and Empire BlueCross and BlueShield in New York as a divisional vice president, overseeing various aspects of the health/medical insurance business. He also taught at the University of Chicago and served on the adjunct faculty in the Graduate School of Business and Health Administration at New York University where he received the Professor of the Year award in 1986. Walsh is on the board of Boston College and is a member of the Minnesota Business Partnership, University of St. Thomas Center for Irish Studies, The American Ireland Fund, The American Chamber of Commerce in Ireland and the ICCUSA (Ireland Chamber of Commerce in the USA). Walsh is a regular guest speaker at numerous colleges, universities, and industry conferences. He was guest speaker recently at Stanford and Harvard, and also addressed A.M. Best's Annual Review and Preview Conference.
Walsh received a Bachelor of Science in Commerce at University College Dublin (UCD) and a Doctorate in Economics from the University of Chicago.
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