Health Care Hall of Fame Past Inductees

Inducted in 2018

At the beginning of her career in healthcare, Sister Mary Jean Ryan was neither a nun nor all that interested in working in a hospital. Ryan, who ended her career as an international leader in the movement to improve quality in healthcare, was trying to decide what to do after high school, having grown up in the tiny Wisconsin town of Cuba City. "I had no idea what I was going to do until a good friend of mine said, 'I think I'm going to St. Mary's for nursing school,' and I said, 'Well that sounds like a good idea. Maybe I'll do that too,' " Ryan recalled. She didn't know what she was getting into. More than 60 years later, the former health system CEO and healthcare quality pioneer was named as a 2018 inductee into Modern Healthcare's Health Care Hall of Fame.