ROCHESTER, September 18, 2009 - Blue Earth family physician Terence Cahill, M.D., on Thursday received the Minnesota Medical Association’s Distinguished Service Award, the highest honor bestowed upon a colleague by the MMA.

Cahill is a staff physician and medical director at United Hospital District Clinics. He has made important contributions to the MMA’s efforts in the areas of quality, health care reform, and legislative advocacy.
 

Cahill has served on the MMA’s Health Care Reform Task Force since 2004. As a member of that group, he helped develop the MMA’s reform plan and kept members focused on the need to preserve patients’ access to care.
 

A champion for quality, Cahill served on the MMA’s Quality Committee from 2004 to 2005 and has worked to make sure that the quality measures used in Minnesota are meaningful and useful. He currently serves on the board of MN Community Measurement—a position he has held since 2007.
 

Cahill also has been a familiar face at the Capitol, representing the interests of physicians and informing lawmakers of the needs of small, rural providers and their patients. He chaired the MMA’s legislative committee from 2001 to 2004.
 

Cahill takes to heart the dictum that physicians should not only tend to their patients but also to their communities. He serves as a member of the Blue Earth School Board, is involved in youth sports, and cares for troubled teens as medical director of the Elmore Academy Adolescent Residential Correctional Facility.
 

He has served with distinction as an MMA Board Trustee since 1999 and has been an MMA delegate for the Blue Earth Valley Medical Society since 1990. Cahill also has been an active member of the Minnesota Academy of Family Physicians and currently serves as president of that organization.

A graduate of Drake University and the University of Minnesota Medical School, Cahill did his family medicine training at the Naval Hospital in Charleston, South Carolina.