Top 25 Women in Healthcare - 2005

With Mary Brainerd as president and CEO at HealthPartners, a Minneapolis-based integrated delivery system, the system announced in October 2004 that it would no longer pay for any of the National Quality Forum's 27 "never events." Brainerd, 51, also led HealthPartners to be chosen for the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation's Pursuing Perfection initiative, using the grant to develop a care system to optimize quality and patient safety.