Women leaders drive diversity, creativity and productivity

View an interactive gallery of the Top 25 Women in Healthcare and read complete coverage

No one knows how much disruption is coming to the healthcare industry with the uncertainty surrounding the Affordable Care Act. Our hope is that the future soon becomes clearer. But one thing less murky is that leadership will be at a premium for providers, payers, healthcare service companies and every firm in between.

That alone would be a significant reason for us to celebrate the leadership of the Top 25 Women in Healthcare who are recognized on these pages. What they represent collectively may offer us some instruction for the months and years to come.

Simply put, the future is diverse. In our work, we experience that reality every day as both a statistical fact and an operational imperative. A diversity of thought and experiences produces better outcomes.

In the next 10 years, about 1 billion women are expected to enter the global workforce. What kind of culture do we want them to create? According to the National Center for Women & Information Technology, or NCWIT, gender-diverse businesses not only perform better financially but also “demonstrate superior team dynamics and productivity.” Many of the CEOs and boards we interact with daily yearn for such outcomes at their own companies.

Teams with an equal number of women are well-rounded. The NCWIT also cited a Lehman Bros. study that revealed “gender-balanced teams were the most likely to experiment, be creative, share knowledge and fulfill tasks.” That's a great recipe for innovation.

All of this, naturally, leads to a better bottom line as well. A recent study of 22,000 publicly traded companies around the world by the Peterson Institute for International Economics found that companies with more women executives performed better financially. This concurs with other research. In fact, McKinsey & Co. notes that $28 trillion could be added to the global economy if women played an equal role to men in their organizations.

These are all important reasons to support Modern Healthcare's biennial Top 25 Women in Healthcare recognition program. We hope you will align with us by sponsoring and mentoring women colleagues in your own organizations.

And we hope you will save the date to join us July 19 in Nashville to personally thank and honor the Top 25 Women in Healthcare. They are building diverse teams that are nimble, responsive and innovative—teams willing to take risks to improve healthcare for all of us.