Mary Adèr

Senior Consultant

Health Management Associates

San Francisco, CA

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Mary Adèr is a highly experienced health policy and finance professional with 20 years in senior level positions in the public and nonprofit sectors. She advises clients on strategy; regulatory, fiscal and policy analysis; and recommendations regarding publicly funded health programs.

Before joining Health Management Associates, Mary served for over a decade in professional staff positions with the California Legislature, including roles as senior health policy advisor to the speaker of the California State Assembly and principal consultant at the Assembly Appropriations Committee.  Mary has developed deep expertise in a broad array of health issues including Medicaid (Medi-Cal), the safety net, and managed care as well as mental health, substance use disorders, children’s health, public health, and health reform.  She not only provided timely analyses but evaluated and negotiated policy, political, and fiscal issues among diverse stakeholders to advance legislation. 

Mary worked at Kaiser Permanente’s national headquarters in California providing policy and quantitative analysis and strategic guidance on health policy and legislation to Kaiser Permanente Health Plan leaders of a $100 billion (annually) integrated health system. She evaluated areas of law, including public health, hospitals, public finance, labor and employment, and charity care.

She also served as deputy director of the County Behavioral Health Directors Association (CBHDA), contributing to her California and behavioral health specific knowledge and expertise. In this role, she was an accomplished subject matter expert, analyst, relationship and consensus builder, and problem solver.  Her work establishing partnerships included collaborating with diverse internal and external stakeholders, especially the behavioral health directors from California’s 58 counties.

Mary earned a Master of Public Policy and a Master of Public Health from the University of California at Berkeley. She also has a bachelor’s degree in psychology from Dartmouth College.