Dr. Patrick (Pat) Lee is the President and CEO of Central Health, the taxpayer-funded hospital district serving Travis County. Since stepping into the role in 2024, Dr. Lee has focused on building a comprehensive, high-quality health care system that improves access to care and coverage for those who need it, addresses long-standing health disparities, and delivers exceptional value to Travis County taxpayers.
Dr. Lee’s vision is for Central Health to provide whole-person health care that is free or highly affordable, easy to navigate, rooted in preventive care, and deeply connected to community needs. Through Central Health’s 2026 “Year of Access” and implementation of its strategic Healthcare Equity Plan, he is advancing a system that reduces patient suffering while responsibly stewarding public resources. Working as one integrated system with CommUnityCare Health Centers and Sendero Health Plans, Dr. Lee is leading efforts to make Central Health the most trusted provider of care in Travis County.
Before joining Central Health, Dr. Lee served as System Chair of Medicine at One Brooklyn Health, a safety-net health system in Brooklyn serving over one million New York City residents. In that position, he led 11 clinical divisions across three hospitals and 27 ambulatory care sites, supporting more than 500 clinicians. Dr. Lee also served as Chairman of Medicine at Mass General Brigham Salem Hospital outside of Boston, leading clinical efforts that resulted in a mortality rate less than half the national average during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Previously, Dr. Lee developed the Global Primary Care Residency Program at Massachusetts General Hospital and a global health course at Harvard Medical School, both informed by his early career work with Dr. Paul Farmer in Rwanda and as Medical Director of Last Mile Health in Liberia, a nonprofit partner of the nation’s Ministry of Health.
Dr. Lee is a graduate of Princeton University, the University of California, San Francisco School of Medicine, and the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University. He completed a residency in Internal Medicine & Primary Care at Massachusetts General Hospital and a fellowship in medical education at Harvard Medical School. Dr. Lee has written extensively on primary care health systems, quality improvement, and medical education for publications including The Lancet, BMJ Quality, the Journal of General Internal Medicine, and the Journal of Graduate Medical Education.