Health Care Hall of Fame Inductees
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Clara Barton
1821-1912, Inducted in 1993
More than 600,000 Americans lost their lives as a result of the Civil War, and as a nurse Barton saw more than her fair share of carnage from both sides during the War Between the States.In fact, Barton told the tale of a time when she was offering a patient water and a bullet penetrated her sleeve and killed the man.During the conflict, Barton delivered much-needed supplies to Union and Confederate soldiers and saw firsthand the unsanitary conditions where doctors performed surgery on patients.In 1881, Barton established the Red Cross, a humanitarian emergency response organization that to this day travels to war zones and disaster areas across the world offering supplies and assistance.Barton remained its director until shortly before her death.
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Robert M. "Bob" Ball
1914-2008, Inducted in 1999
Ball's name is synonymous with the U.S. Social Security Administration, and the influential government official was a progenitor of the U.S. Medicare program.In 1939, Ball joined the Social Security Board's Bureau of Old-Age Insurance, a precursor to the SSA, where he worked until 1945. He would return to the bureau in 1949 and would eventually help draft legislation establishing disability benefits.In 1962, under President John F. Kennedy, Ball was named Social Security commissioner and would serve in that position under the Johnson and Nixon administrations as well.
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Karl Bays
1933-1989, Inducted in 2001
Bays, the former chairman and CEO of the American Hospital Supply Co., commanded attention.During his life, he would advise three presidents and lobby Congress on behalf of healthcare suppliers and the industry as a whole. During the Carter administration, for instance, Bays would lobby against provider price controls.A former head of the Federation of American Hospitals once said of Bays that “his biggest contribution to healthcare was clearly his pushing and forcing the issue of CEOs getting more involved with politics.” As the leader of the American Hospital Supply Co., Bays pushed the company's sales to $3.5 billion in 1985 from $500 million in 1971. Wanting even more, Bays then pushed for a merger with what was then called the Healthcare Corporation of America, or HCA as it is known today. The deal never materialized though, as Baxter Travenol Laboratories, now called Baxter Healthcare, stepped in and trumped HCA's offer. The companies merged in 1985 in a $3.8 billion deal.
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Robin C. Buerki
1892-1991, Inducted in 1989
One of the “graybeards” of the profession, Buerki played a key role in developing the U.S. healthcare system. From 1938 to 1940, he directed the Commission on Graduate Medical Education, which helped improve the country's focus on physician education. After World War II, Buerki became one of the original hospital representatives on the Federation Hospital Council. That group was responsible for overseeing the administration of the Hill-Burton Act, which provided funding to build 1,500 hospitals. The man who went on to become executive director of the Henry Ford Hospital in Detroit was also a founder of the American College of Hospital Administrators, now known as the American College of Healthcare Executives. Buerki was the first to receive the organization's highest honor: the Gold Medal for Excellence in Hospital Administration. A founding member of the Advisory Board of Medical Specialties in 1933, he reportedly attended every assembly until the time of his death in 1991.
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Jack O. Bovender Jr. 1945- , Inducted in 2015
Bovender, former chairman and CEO at HCA, held many roles at the company, spending 37 of his 40 years in the industry there. He took over as the for-profit chain's president and CEO in 2001, retiring as chairman in 2009. During his tenure, he played crucial roles in helping to get the company back on track in the aftermath of a merger with Columbia Hospital Corp. that ultimately led to large legal settlements with the federal government. HCA also continued to grow through mergers and acquisitions, notably with the addition of Health Midwest of Kansas City, Mo., in 2003.The company also was a leader in promoting diversity, especially through its COO Development Program, which Bovender championed. It served as a launching pad for young executives, including many minority candidates, speeding up their rise in the leadership ranks. Bovender named himself chief diversity officer to oversee implementation of the program, which became a model for the industry.
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Nancy Brinker
1946- , Inducted in 2007
Nancy Brinker's sister, Susan G. Komen, died of breast cancer in 1980. She was 36. Two years later, Brinker would create in her sister's memory what would become the world's largest not-for-profit organizations dedicated to breast cancer research in the world.With only $200, a broken typewriter and a list of names, Brinker founded the Susan G. Komen Cancer Foundation in 1982, which was later renamed Susan G. Komen for the Cure. Brinker also created the Susan G. Komen Race for the Cure.In the organization's first 25 years, it invested more than $1 billion in breast cancer research. And between 1982 and 2007, the five-year survival rate for those diagnosed with breast cancer rose to 98% from 74%. Government funding for research jumped to $900 million from a mere $30 million.
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Fred Brown1940- , Inducted in 2014
An integrated healthcare delivery system was a foreign concept to many in the industry back in the late 1980s and early 1990s. As hospitals within the same region competed with each other--as well as with other providers--Fred Brown was one of a handful of hospital executives at the time who saw the potential benefit in combining the resources of many different healthcare partners to create a comprehensive system of care for the communities they served.Those who have worked with him and for him over his 50-year-plus career say it was Brown's vision to provide a continuum of care that led him to initiate the 1993 merger of St. Louis-based Christian Health Services—where he was CEO—with Barnes Hospital and the Jewish Hospital of St. Louis. It was the union of those three organizations that laid the foundation for what would eventually become BJC HealthCare, which Brown ran for the next seven years as founding CEO and vice chairman.With 13 acute-care hospitals in Missouri and Illinois, BJC was one of the first systems to incorporate teaching hospitals, as well as long-term care and home health services, a medical school and behavioral healthcare into its network. The system has since expanded to serve more than 200,000 residents in the St. Louis area, with a staff of nearly 30,000 at 200 care sites, including hospitals, home-care services, hospice, long-term care facilities, doctors' offices and rehabilitation centers.Brown said the merger wasn't about creating a large health system but was more a response to the many changes going on in healthcare at the time. “We saw the introduction of managed care in the 1980s, the introduction of the for-profit movement in the country,” he said. “And I thought that one of my responsibilities was to ensure that there was sustainability within the organization over a period of time.”
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Ray E. Brown
1913-1974, Inducted in 1988
Brown was a hospital administrator, educator and prolific author.He got his start in healthcare in 1940 when Shelby (N.C.) Hospital trustees sought a new administrator. The head of the hospital division at Duke Empowerment had gotten to know Brown because the executive's office was in the same building as the Duke Power Co., one of the Brown's clients for his tax assessments services.After Shelby, Brown went on to become administrator at North Carolina Baptist Hospital, Winston-Salem, and then superintendent of the University of Chicago Clinics where he would also teach. In 1970, Brown was named executive vice president of the Northwestern University McGaw Medical Center. He taught at the graduate school of management until his death.AMSUS, the Society of Federal Health Agencies, created an annual award in his name a year after his death for an individual who demonstrated in their careers outstanding accomplishments in healthcare management.
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Robin C. Buerki
1892-1991, Inducted in 1989
One of the “graybeards” of the profession, Buerki played a key role in developing the U.S. healthcare system. From 1938 to 1940, he directed the Commission on Graduate Medical Education, which helped improve the country's focus on physician education. After World War II, Buerki became one of the original hospital representatives on the Federation Hospital Council. That group was responsible for overseeing the administration of the Hill-Burton Act, which provided funding to build 1,500 hospitals. The man who went on to become executive director of the Henry Ford Hospital in Detroit was also a founder of the American College of Hospital Administrators, now known as the American College of Healthcare Executives. Buerki was the first to receive the organization's highest honor: the Gold Medal for Excellence in Hospital Administration. A founding member of the Advisory Board of Medical Specialties in 1933, he reportedly attended every assembly until the time of his death in 1991.
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George Bugbee
1904-1995, Inducted in 1989
Bugbee reportedly helped transform the American Hospital Association from what was once more of a social club into the educational and political organization that it is today. A former hospital administer, Bugbee played a key role in helping pass the Hill-Burton Act, which provided $150 million for the creation of new hospitals across the country. Moving up the ranks quickly in hospital administration, Bugbee took over as superintendent of 1,500-bed City Hospital, Cleveland, at the age of 33. He would become the AHA's president in 1943 and serve until 1954; he was the first nonphysician to head the association.Bugbee also formed the Joint Commission on Accreditation of Hospitals and the Commission on Hospital Care, which did a two-year study of the nation's hospital landscape. It found the country was 90,000 beds short of what was needed. So Bugbee contacted his friend, Sen. Harold Burton (R-Ohio) and helped the senator craft and lobby for the landmark Hill-Burton Act.
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Mother Francesca Xavier Cabrini
1850-1917, Inducted in 1992
Mother Francesca Xavier Cabrini established 67 schools, convents and orphanages worldwide during her lifetime, and that number includes hospitals in Chicago and New York.Born in Lombardy, Italy, Cabrini would eventually come to the U.S. under the direction of Pope Leo XIII and dedicate her life to improving the health and welfare of immigrants. While helping to improve people's health was her life's work, she, herself, suffered from poor health her entire life. Speaking of St. Frances Xavier Cabrini, Pope Pius XII said that although she was “frail in constitution, her spirit was endowed with such singular strength that, knowing the will of God in her own regard, she permitted nothing to impede her from accomplishing what seemed beyond mortal strength.”She first got involved with hospitals in 1892 when she found a New York-based hospital was poorly run. Cabrini made sure that the hospital would be able to meet the demands of Italian immigrants who were being denied adequate healthcare. At the turn of the century, she would move to Chicago and open a new Catholic hospital. She was canonized in 1946.
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Patricia Cahill 1940- , Inducted in 2009
Cahill's career path could not have been predicted in 1960 when the French major with a law degree—who never practiced law—entered the workforce as a teacher.Although she attributes her steady climb to becoming president and CEO of Catholic Health Initiatives as “being in the right place at the right time,” it was Cahill's skills and ability to work with others that helped her in her career. She would serve in that role from 1996 to 2003.In the '90s, prior to joining CHI, Cahill worked with the Archdiocese of New York and spearheaded the efforts to establish a network of 18 hospitals and nursing homes under a joint religious sponsorship as well as another alliance of 43 hospitals under 15 religious sponsorships. She would go on to head CHI during a time of great transition within Catholic healthcare as CHI was created in 1995 as a merger of 10 separate Roman Catholic religious congregations, which owned more than 100 hospitals. As Cahill interviewed for the job, she won over the steering committee with her experience and her clarity. The committee voted 12-0 to hire her.
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Ida M. Cannon 1877-1960, Inducted in 1997
Cannon was the first to establish a social-work department in a hospital.She joined Massachusetts General Hospital in 1905 to “make medical care effective” and to “cure consumption.” In 1907, Cannon was named head worker and eight years later became chief of social service for the Massachusetts General Hospital. Eventually her work would take her across the country as an employee of the Russell Sage Foundation to produce a survey of the 100 or so hospitals in the country with a social services department.The survey included information on common problems, recordkeeping, choice of workers and more. During this period, she would also develop the first medial social-work curriculum by a U.S. school of social work at the Boston School of Social Work, now the Simmons College School of Social Work.In 1918, Cannon would cofound the American Association of Hospital Social Workers, which would later be renamed the American Association of Medical Social Workers. In 1955, the association would be incorporated into the National association of Social Workers.
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Charles P. Cardwell Jr. 1903-1977, Inducted in 2007
Cardwell, whose background was in engineering, would be remembered as a leader in healthcare administration and education. He entered the field at a time when most hospitals were run by physicians or nurses. In 1947, Cardwell would become director of the hospital division at the Medical College of Virginia Hospitals in Richmond, which would later become part of Virginia Commonwealth University. At the time, legend has it that Cardwell asked the president of the college what his budget was, the executive answered, “What's a budget?”Two years later, Cardwell would found the college's school of hospital administration. He would also be a professor in the school until 1969. Cardwell was known as an administrator who didn't sit in the office. He would often walk the floors of the hospital and ask workers for their opinions. A former colleague remembered Cardwell as “a good administrator, but he was a very caring person. He put the welfare of patients first. When we did improvements on buildings, wards … his foremost concern was the patient. Is it going to be good for the people we serve?”
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H. Robert "Bob" Cathcart 1924- , Inducted in 1997
Cathcart spent 43 years at Philadelphia's Pennsylvania Hospital, which Benjamin Franklin helped found as the nation's first hospital.Cathcart would serve 21 of those years as the hospital's top executive. His mantra during that time was simple: “The patient should always come first.” Cathcart would also become a chairman of the American Hospital Association and a speaker at the AHA's House of Delegates. He received the AHA's Distinguished Service Award in 1983. Always looking out for the patients—especially the poor and uninsured—Cathcart once said, “I would like to think that I was more of a social worker than an entrepreneur.”
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Wilbur J. Cohen 1913-1987, Inducted in 1988
Cohen is regarded as the father of Medicare. He proposed the system in 1935—30 years before it became an integral part of the U.S. healthcare system.He co-wrote the legislation that established both Medicare and Medicaid, and under the Roosevelt administration became the first employee of the Social Security Administration. After leaving Social Security in 1956, he went to the University of Michigan to teach social welfare.Ignoring the opinions of critics who perennially labeled him as an advocate for socialized medicine, President John F. Kennedy chose Cohen to become assistant secretary for legislation at the Health, Education and Welfare Department, or HEW, which was the predecessor to today's HHS. During his tenure, Cohen oversaw the legislation that brought the Medicare and Medicaid programs to this country.
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John Colloton
1931- , Inducted in 2003
Much like when Joe DiMaggio retired as a Yankee in 1951 and another future Hall-of-Famer, Mickey Mantle, joined the Bronx Bombers that same year, the University Hospitals and Clinics at the University of Iowa went from one Hall-of-Famer to the next when Colloton replaced Gerhard Hartman as director. When Hartman retired in 1971, Colloton replaced his mentor and made it his mission to “bring a broad array of cutting-edge medical services to 3 million Iowans.” Colloton would change the system from one that offered 28-bed open wards segregated by patients' ability to pay to one that offered the same class of care for all patients. By 1993, he had tripled University Hospitals' staff and saw patient visits hit 500,000, and 92% of those people were privately insured.
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Colleen Conway-Welch
1944- , Inducted in 2017
In her long career in nursing, Colleen Conway-Welch figured out sometimes it's good to bend the rules a bit. She first realized that early in her career, as she cared for a patient nearing death. “She had a Yorkshire terrier she just adored,” Conway-Welch recalled. “She just wanted to see that little dog before she died.” Dogs, however, weren't allowed in the hospital. But that rule interfered with Conway-Welch's idea of how best to care for her patient, so she found a way around it. She brought the dog up to the fire exit in a small basket, allowing a reunion between the dying woman and the dog she wanted to tell goodbye. “I realized what I did was really the essence of nursing,” Conway-Welch said. “Afterwards, she was peaceful. That's what nurses do. They take care of the needs of patients . . . not only the physical but the psychological and even the spiritual. We address every aspect of care.” That would be a theme troughout her career—advocating for nurses to do more, to learn more, to push boundaries to make sure patients are cared for. And that career included a long tenure as dean of the Vanderbilt University School of Nursing in Nashville.
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Robert M. Cunningham Jr.
1909-1992, Inducted in 1991
Cunningham wrote extensively on healthcare, including several books, such as Hospitals, Doctors and Dollars and Wellness at Work. He was the editor of Modern Hospital magazine from 1951 to 1973 and editor of Modern Nursing Home from 1964 to 1973. Cunningham then helped launch Modern Healthcare magazine when the two publications were merged in 1973.After retiring from Modern Healthcare in 1974, Cunningham became a consultant for the Blue Cross and Blue Shield Association.A colleague of Cunningham's at Modern Hospital once said that Cunningham “has enriched, if not enraged, a generation of healthcare officials who grumpily accept his scoffing and scolding, possibly because they understand that a man who can write so well can't be all bad—or all wrong.”
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Donald W. Cordes
1917- , Inducted in 1992
Cordes is credited with turning a small, one-dimensional hospital in Iowa into a multifaceted tertiary medical center. Cordes spent 35 years as administrator and president of Iowa Methodist Medical Center in Des Moines. One of his biggest accomplishments occurred in the 1950s when he expanded hospital-based training programs for nurses. The idea helped change the perception of hospital-based healthcare as a place to heal and be cured rather than a place to be comforted during illness. A former president of the American College of Healthcare Executives, Cordes also helped head the American Hospital Association's Council of Nursing as its chairman. One hospital executive referred to Cordes as “one of the real gentlemen in the field.”
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George W. Crile
1864-1943, Inducted in 1997
Crile is remembered as one of the nation's finest surgeons and one of the founders of the world-famous Cleveland Clinic.Crile was known for his surgical skills, particularly when it came to neck and thyroid surgery. During the Spanish-American War, Crile served as a brigade surgeon. During the war, he observed the relationship between shock, blood pressure and death on patients. He later would perform the first person-to-person blood transfusion in Cleveland in 1906. Crile would also serve as brigadier general in the Medical Reserve Corps after World War I.In 1912, Crile was one of 12 men who were picked to form a committee on organizing the American College of Surgeons. Crile would serve on its governing board for 26 years.
Edwin L. Crosby
1908-1972, Inducted in 1996
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Crosby, who became the ninth president of the American Board of Medical Specialties, served as administrator of the Johns Hopkins Hospital from 1941 to 1952. His focus was on public health, epidemiology and medical administration. In 1952, a year after the creation of the Joint Commission on Accreditation of Hospitals (now known as the Joint Commission), Crosby would become its first director. The commission would begin offering accreditation to hospitals in 1953 after the American College of Surgeons transferred its Hospital Standardization Program.Crosby would go on to serve as president of the American Hospital Association for 18 years until his death in 1972.
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Michael E. DeBakey
1908-2008, Inducted in 1996
DeBakey was a surgeon who performed the first aorto-coronary artery bypass. DeBakey, who lived till the age of 99, reportedly performed more than 60,000 heart surgeries during his long career. He was also credited with developing Mobile Army Surgical Hospital, or MASH units, and performed the first carotid artery blockage removal and the first path-graft angioplasty. It was his testimony before Congress in 1963 that helped garner federal support for an artificial heart program. The next year, President Lyndon B. Johnson appointed DeBakey chairman of the President's Commission on Heart Disease, Cancer and Stroke. Just a couple of years after that, he would perform the first successful partial implantation of a partial artificial heart. In 1968, he led a team in a multiple transplantation procedure, where four patients received a heart, kidneys and one lung from a single donor.In 1999, the Baylor College of Medicine named its surgery department after DeBakey, who served as the department's chairman from 1948 to 1993, as president from 1969 to 1979 and chancellor from 1979 to 1996.
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Graham Lee Davis
1893-1958, Inducted in 1993
Davis was a financial guru, modernizing the way hospitals handled their financial management.Early in his career, Davis served as the first editor of Southern Hospitals magazine. After building a national reputation, Davis then helped create the American Association of Hospital Accountants. He would later help found the Healthcare Financial Management Association.During his career, he wrote numerous pieces of literature on hospital accounting and management, “when there was none around,” said a former executive director of the association.Davis died in a car accident in 1958 at the age of 65.
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Michael M. Davis
1879-1971, Inducted in 2002
Davis was thinking about the financing of healthcare when few others were.Robert Sigmond, another Health Care Hall-of-Famer, once said, “Can you imagine a world without health insurance?” When Davis “got involved in the field at the turn of the (20th) century, nobody thought about the healthcare system, the financing of healthcare.” Indeed, Davis spent five decades as part of the Committee on the Costs of Medical Care, an independent group funded by major foundations at the time, where he would help produce 27 volumes of recommended changes in financing and the organization of healthcare services.In 1913, Davis began operating pay clinics where people would pay a small fee in exchange for healthcare services. Seven years later, he joined the Rockefeller Foundation in New York where he was tasked with duplicating his work. He later advised Presidents Franklin D. Roosevelt and Harry Truman and worked on the legislation that would produce Medicare and Medicaid. A year later, he launched the Cornell pay clinic in New York. Davis, a prolific writer, penned a column for Modern Hospital magazine, the predecessor to Modern Healthcare.
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Thomas Dolan
1947- , Inducted in 2017
As an assistant professor and later director of graduate studies at the University of Missouri's School of Health Related Professions in the 1970s, Thomas Dolan looked around and saw a lot of similar students. The civil rights movement had burst onto the American scene in the preceding decades, and now the women's movement was in full swing—particularly on American campuses. However the future healthcare leaders didn't seem to reflect the changes underway in society, Dolan thought. And he was in a position to do something about it.Throughout his career--notably during his 22-year tenure as CEO of the American College of Healthcare Executives--addressing gender and racial disparities would always be a top priority.
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Abraham Flexner
1866-1959, Inducted in 1990
Abraham Flexner did the unthinkable. He forced 100 medical schools to close in the early part of the 20th century.An outsider to the healthcare field as an educator, not a physician, Flexner was tasked with inspecting the 155 medical schools in the U.S. and Canada. Over the course of a year, he compiled information to produce his scathing report that found only that 39 institutions offered students an acceptable education. Between 1917 and 1927, Flexner was able to raise $600 million to help build quality medical schools. When he died, a New York Times obituary said, “No other American of his time contributed more to the welfare of his country and of humanity in general."
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Loretta C. Ford
1920- , Inducted in 1995
In 1965, Ford founded an experimental pediatric nurse practitioner graduate program at the University of Colorado. It started with 12 women. Ten years after the program opened, there were more than 10,000 nurse practitioners across the country.Ford founded the nurse practitioner movement. Ford came to the university in 1960—first as an assistant professor and then as a full professor—following an 11-year stint as a public health nursing supervisor at the Boulder, Colo., city and county health departments.Ford stayed at the University of Colorado until 1972 when she moved to New York and became the founding dean of the University of Rochester School of Nursing.
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Benjamin Franklin
1706-1790, Inducted in 1988
One of the nation's Founding Fathers, Franklin led the charge for the nation's first hospital: Pennsylvania Hospital in Philadelphia.He helped found the hospital with Thomas Bond, a physician, in 1751 to care for the “sick-poor and insane of Philadelphia.”Franklin was a newly elected member of the Pennsylvania Assembly at the time. Unable to get the assembly to agree to sign off on providing 2,000 pounds as startup costs, Franklin was able to get the assembly to sign off on matching the sum if he were able to get Philadelphians to come up with the money. The multitalented politician was able to raise 2,750 pounds.Eventually Franklin would serve as Pennsylvania Hospital's president from 1755 to 1757.
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Thomas F. Frist Jr.
1939- , Inducted in 2003
Thomas F. Frist Jr., who in 1968 co-founded the Hospital Corporation of America with his father Thomas F. Frist Sr., helped transform Nashville into the for-profit healthcare destination that it is today. Together, the Frists were the first father and son combination to both be enshrined in the Healthcare Hall of Fame. In 1969, when the company had 11 hospitals, it filed its initial public offering. By the end of the year, Hospital Corporation of America had 26 facilities. It was only the beginning. Under Frist's leadership, the company now known simply by three letters—HCA—has become a private company three times in its history. The most recent occurred in 2006 when the company was acquired by a private investment group. The total value of that transaction was $33 billion, which at the time was the largest leveraged buyout in history.In 1982, the Frists started the HCA Foundation, now known as the Frist Foundation, which invests in not-for-profit organizations in Nashville. In 2008, the foundation contributed more than $8 million to the community.
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Thomas F. Frist Sr.
1910-1998, Inducted in 1990
Thomas F. Frist Sr. once said, “It's not mortar and equipment that make a hospital. It is the warmth, compassion and attitude of good employees that leads to quality care.” Frist is best known as the creator of Hospital Corporation of America, a for-profit healthcare system. He started the system in 1968 with his son, Thomas F. Frist Jr., who is also in the Healthcare Hall of Fame, and Jack C. Massey, a Nashville businessman.At its peak in 1987, the chain that would later be known simply as HCA owned or managed 500 hospitals across the country. At the time, for-profit healthcare was considered a radical idea. On the day that HCA had its initial public offering, shares jumped from $18 to $46 the first day of trading.In the late 1980s, Frist became vice chairman and chief medical officer of the company with an eye toward quality. Having been a patient numerous times in his life—from having a broken neck to a heart attack and two bypasses—Frist said that he knew what was important in a hospital.As CMO of HCA, Frist pushed for total quality management, a concept of W. Edwards Deming's, that added value at each step of delivery.
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Sidney R. Garfield
1906-1984, Inducted in 1988
Today's managed-care industry might not be the same had it not been for the influence of Garfield.The co-founder of the Kaiser Permanente Medical Care Program, Garfield helped institute a group practice prepayment program, something that was frowned about by much of the industry. Despite the criticism, Garfield's plan laid the groundwork for the numerous HMOs and PPOs that are in existence today.Garfield was a surgeon by trade, but when a friend told him about 5,000 construction workers without health insurance who were building an aqueduct on the Mojave Desert, Garfield began to formulate an idea. After borrowing money, Garfield established a 15-bed hospital in the middle of the construction site to care for sick workers. He had two nurses, a cook, a janitor and an ambulance.After having difficulty receiving payment from the workers and insurers alike, Garfield came up with the idea to deduct a nickel a day from their paychecks to pay for future care.
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Sister Mary Ignatia Gavin
1889-1966, Inducted in 2008
The “Angel of Alcoholics Anonymous,” as Sister Mary Ignatia Gavin is known, was a pioneer in treating alcoholism before it was even recognized as a legitimate medical diagnosis.In a time when most hospitals turned away alcoholics, Sister Ignatia went out of her way to treat them and sober them up. When someone would come drunk to Akron, Ohio-based St. Thomas Hospital's emergency room, Sister Ignatia would take that person to an anteroom near the hospital's chapel to sober up. During delirium tremens, Sister Ignatia would administer morphine and give alcoholics black coffee and a juice-Karo concoction when they woke up.According to one estimate, 15,000 alcoholics recovered under Sister Ignatia's care.
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William B. Graham
1911-2006, Inducted in 1993
In 1945, at the age of 33, Graham joined Baxter Laboratories, which is now known as Baxter International. Although Graham had never worked in the healthcare industry, Baxter's co-founder and president at the time hired Graham as vice president and manager.Eight years later, Graham would become CEO of the company, a position he would hold for nearly three decades.Under his leadership, Baxter grew into an international medical supplies company with commercial sales of $1.3 billion. And under his watch the company produced such innovations as the first commercially built artificial kidney (1953) and the first commercial heart-lung bypass device for open heart surgery (1962).
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John Griffith
1934- , Inducted in 2014
When asked what keeps him going after more than 50 years in the field of healthcare management education, John Griffith will tell you, “Opportunity inspires me. I like to see students get better. I like to see hospitals succeed. I like to see problems get solved.”Griffith has been a professor of health management and policy at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor since 1960, including many years of leadership positions in the department. He is now professor emeritus. As the man who literally wrote the book on health management, Griffith is recognized for his quantitative approach in helping healthcare organizations, and their future leaders, to institute the best practices that lead to higher performance and cultures of empowerment. His widely used textbook, The Well-Managed Healthcare Organization, outlines a leadership culture that promotes teamwork and emphasizes the need for continuous improvement in the hospital setting. Originally published in 1987, the book is now in its seventh edition, and many still consider it to be the most comprehensive resource in the field. But Griffith says he's most proud of a publication called Quantitative Techniques for Hospital Planning and Control (published in 1972). He says it focuses on medical quality, measuring market share and forecasting demand, which he says were relatively unexplored territories at the time but are top priorities in the industry today.As the author of more than a dozen textbooks and numerous articles and papers, he never had a shortage of material to shape his curricula, but his main focus has been to help both graduate students and practicing healthcare executives translate book knowledge into actual applications. “A textbook does not impart skills, it imparts facts,” Griffith said. “To teach students skills you have to get them to apply what is in the textbook.”
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Frank Groner
1911-1994, Inducted in 1988
As the longtime leader of Baptist Memorial Hospital in Memphis, Tenn., Frank Shelby Groner saw the facility grow from a 500-bed hospital in 1946 to a 2,055-bed behemoth in 1980.Groner, the son of a Baptist minister, said he was “almost destined for some kind of service to fellow man,” and hospital administration was his calling in life.Groner came to Baptist Memorial after a 10-year stint as assistant administrator at Southern Baptist Hospital in New Orleans, a facility founded by his father, F.S. Groner. One of Groner's innovations was making most of the rooms in the ever-expanding Baptist Memorial private, something that was unusual for the time.Under his leadership, Baptist Memorial was also the first hospital in the nation to put televisions in the rooms and introduce piped oxygen into surgery rooms.Groner's brother, Pat, is also a Health Care Hall-of-Famer.
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Pat Groner
1920-2012, Inducted in 2008
Pat Groner foresaw the need to boost outpatient surgeries in the 1970s when the advantages were not well-known and patients always had to stay in the hospital overnight after surgery.Groner, president of Baptist Hospital in Pensacola, Fla., and other executives spoke with Blue Cross about covering outpatient surgery. Eventually the insurer agreed and, Groner says, it was not long before other insurers followed suit.Groner also recognized the need for housing programs for the elderly. Before assisted-living commonplace, Baptist bought contiguous property for housing programs. He also focused on cost-containment through employee incentives.Under Groner's watch, Baptist Hospital became the third—and by far the smallest hospital at the time—to use helicopters to transfer sick patients. The helipad was used 400 times the first year.Groner's brother, Frank, is also a Health Care Hall-of-Famer.
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James A. Hamilton
1899-1985, Inducted in 1998
Hamilton spent 49 years of his life as a healthcare administrator, consultant, teacher and mentor. In 1946, Hamilton started the first graduate program in hospital administration at the University of Minnesota. Since 1958, the American College of Healthcare Executives has awarded the James A. Hamilton Award for someone who has written an outstanding book about healthcare management.During Hamilton's career, he served as chairman and then course director of the American College of Hospital Administrators, which later changed its name to the ACHE.
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T. Stewart Hamilton
1911-2002, Inducted in 1999
Hamilton, former president of the American Hospital Association, began his healthcare career in hospital administration in 1941 when he got a job as assistant director at Massachusetts General Hospital.However, his stay in Boston was cut short when in 1942 he went to Casablanca and Rome to administer the 6th General Hospital, Massachusetts General unit, during World War II.After returning from the war, Hamilton went to Newton-Wellesley Hospital in Massachusetts and then to Hartford (Conn.) Hospital where he would become the hospital's leader from 1954 until his retirement in 1976.In 1961, a fire, which started in a trash chute, broke out at Hartford Hospital. Sixteen people were killed. What Hamilton learned from the tragedy led to new fire-prevention efforts in hospitals across the country.Hamilton also played a key role in developing Medicare and Medicaid and was in the Oval Office when the legislation was signed. The first Medicare reimbursement check was issued to Hartford Hospital in 1966.
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Gerhard Hartman
1911-1998, Inducted in 1991
Hartman devoted most of his life to management, education and research.“The Old Man,” as many former students referred to him, became the director of the University of Iowa hospital in 1946. Over his tenure at Iowa, Hartman trained nearly 500 master's degree and doctoral students; 20 of his graduates would eventually become heads of graduate programs in hospital administration in other universities. Under his leadership, Hartman broadened the scope of the hospital's research programs.A year later, the university became the first in the nation to offer a doctorate degree in hospital administration.One of his former students once said, Hartman was “one of the greatest minds that we've had in the health sector (who also has) an extraordinary capacity to persuade.”
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Sister Mary Gerald Hartney
1910-2008, Inducted in 2002
An Irish immigrant, Sister Mary Gerald Hartney, or Sister Gerald as she preferred to be called, taught cost accounting to hospitals decades before the Medicare program was implemented.She also preached accountability years before the concept was in vogue as she instituted internal controls to prevent fraud and abuse.Thanks to Sister Gerald's leadership, thousands of Roman Catholic nuns became eligible for Social Security benefits through a 1966 congressional act. She also helped form the Healthcare Financial Management Association, which began as the American Association of Hospital Accountants. She served as its first female president from 1954 to 1955.
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Allen Hicks
1928- , Inducted in 2001
In 1955, fresh from graduating with a master's degree in hospital administration, Hicks became CEO of then-50-bed Schmitt Memorial Hospital in Beardstown, Ill. However, this was just the beginning of his administrating days.He would go on to take the top spot at five other hospitals of various sizes during his 46-year career.His career would eventually take him to Community Hospitals in Indianapolis where he would co-found the Multihospital Mutual Insurance company, which covered malpractice.In 1977, Hicks would co-found the Voluntary Hospitals of America, or VHA, which would become one of the nation's largest purchasing cooperatives.
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William A. Hillenbrand
1905-1986, Inducted in 1991
Hillenbrand started the Hill-Rom Co. at the age of 23 on Oct. 23, 1929. The company opened for business less than a week before the stock market crashed and the Great Depression set in.Despite the unfortunate timing, Hillenbrand pressed on and created the concept of “bringing the home into the hospital.” Bucking the trend at the time of hospitals having all metal white beds, Hillenbrand decided to manufacture beds made of wood and steel to create a more comfortable, homey experience for patients.To sell his beds, Hillenbrand came up with the idea to let hospitals try them on a floor for free for six months. If the administrator didn't like the beds, Hill-Rom would take them back with no charge.Over the years, the company was known for introducing many innovations in hospital beds—from the first adjustable crank double pedestal over bed table in 1933 to the first therapeutically designed rocker/recliner in 1972.
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Sister Grace Marie Hiltz
1920-1985, Inducted in 1995
Sister Grace Marie Hiltz founded the Sisters of Charity Health Care Systems after she left Cincinnati's Good Samaritan Hospital where she served as president and CEO from 1962 to 1979.At the hospital, she was known to always keep a drawer full of toys to give to young visitors. Hiltz died unexpectedly in 1985—two days before the dedication of a new million-dollar wing at Good Samaritan, which was the flagship facility of the Sisters of Charity system.In the 1970s, Hiltz struck a deal with the Blue Cross and Blue Shield plan in Southwest Ohio to form Cincinnati's first HMO, which was co-owned by the insurer and Good Samaritan.Hiltz also served on the American Hospital Association board during her career as well as the Catholic Health Association's. She served as chair of what was then called the Catholic Hospital Association from 1974 to 1975.
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Harold W. Hinderer
1928-1981, Inducted in 1991
Hinderer accomplished a lot in a mere 53 years on this earth.He played a key role in developing the St. Louis-based Daughters of Charity National Health System, which once was the nation's largest not-for-profit health system. In the early 1960s before the national minimum wage was instituted in 1966, Hinderer instructed the system to introduce a minimum wage in its hospitals.In 1965, he also worked as an adviser to the Social Security Administration and devised a plan of using the ratio of charges to charges applied to cost that Medicare employed to calculate its share of costs. He would later play a key role in defining and implementing Medicare rules when he served as part of the government's Provider Reimbursement Review Board.
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Yoshi Honkawa
1924- , Inducted in 2014
Yoshi Honkawa is, in his own words, a people person. Though it might seem an inadequate description for someone who is renowned in the healthcare administration and policy arenas, the label is nonetheless fitting for the 90-year-old leader. During his 50-year career, he has met and earned the respect, admiration and friendship of a who's-who list of healthcare and political decisionmakers and thought leaders across the country.“He's the master of developing relationships,” said Thomas Priselac, longtime president and CEO of Cedars-Sinai Health System in Los Angeles. Priselac experienced that firsthand when he joined Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in 1979 as an assistant administrator. Honkawa had joined the organization four years before when he was named its director of finance. Honkawa's wide network of relationships, developed during previous leadership positions with the Los Angeles County Department of Hospitals, proved key to securing the financing needed to consolidate two campuses. The project set Cedars-Sinai on the trajectory to become the institution it is today. Honkawa was later promoted to VP of government and industry relations, a post he held from 1978 to 2001.His long career includes service on the State of California Advisory Health Council. Then-Gov. Ronald Reagan appointed him as the panel's first chairman. He also was appointed to and later chaired the National Council on Health Planning and Development under President Jimmy Carter, an advisory body on national health policies.Honkawa credits his parents with giving him the work ethic and values on which his career has been built. The son of Japanese immigrants, he was raised in Billings, Mont. He recalls skipping his first year of school after listening to his mother teach his older siblings numbers and the alphabet every morning, when she herself spoke limited English upon arriving in the U.S. His mother also dressed him up for school every morning, insisting that he wear a bowtie. “It was a lesson in pride and how you want people to perceive you,” Honkawa said. At the restaurant the family owned, Honkawa helped alongside his parents and three older siblings. He watched his father, who spent 15 hours a day working in the restaurant, develop relationships with suppliers, customers and employees. Honkawa said those interactions and his father's dedication to his work taught him early lessons about honesty, integrity, loyalty and strength of character.
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Robert Wood Johnson
1893-1968, Inducted in 1990
Robert Wood Johnson, or “Gen. Johnson” as most people knew him because of his service as a brigadier general in World War II, is perhaps best remembered as the man who left most of his fortune to his eponymous foundation aimed at improving Americans' health and healthcare.Johnson was the longtime chairman of the Johnson & Johnson company, which was founded by his father and two uncles. It was Johnson, however, who was able to turn a small surgical supply company into an international behemoth.Always thinking about improving healthcare, a colleague once said that even on his death bed, he was contemplating improvements to the hospital bed in which he laid.
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L.R. "Rush" Jordan
1924-2009, Inducted in 2000
A veteran of World War II and the Korean War, Jordan became assistant director of Duke University Medical Center in 1955. His goal was always to get as many voices heard as possible.After leaving Duke, Jordan would go on to create the graduate program in healthcare administration at the University of Florida in Gainesville.There he would also recognize the importance of nursing and establish one of the first unit-managers programs, placing a lay administrator on each hospital floor. This allowed nurses to spend more time with the patients.Jordan was one of the founders of the Voluntary Hospitals of America, or VHA. Jordan's career would also take him to Miami Valley Hospital, Dayton, Ohio, in the late 1970s. Learning that East Dayton, a poor neighborhood less than a mile from Miami Valley, had just one doctor for 18,000 people, Jordan went to work to create the East Dayton Health Center in partnership with the city and county.
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Edward M. "Ted" Kennedy
1932-2009, Inducted in 2010
Known as the “Lion of the Senate,” Kennedy was dubbed with many other labels over the years. The ultimate liberal. A pragmatic and dogged worker. But Kennedy may be best known for his ability to buck convention and reach across partisan lines to find consensus on issues.Healthcare was a signature issue for the Massachusetts Democrat who served in the U.S. Senate for 47 years. “Sen. Kennedy has always been a warrior for healthcare,” said Sen. Max Baucus, a Montana Democrat.Kennedy was often accused by political opponents of being the ultimate liberal, but when trying to craft a bipartisan compromise he was the ultimate pragmatist, said Stuart Altman, a healthcare policy professor at Brandeis Univeristy.Even as Kennedy pushed for broader reform needs, he would look for opportunities to make incremental improvements and did so in a way that secured bipartisan support. Legislative success included the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, State Children's Health Insurance Program and the Medicare Modernization Act of 2003.Kennedy died of brain cancer in August of 2009. He was 77.
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David Kinzer
1920-1990, Inducted in 1995
Kinzer, who worked in the healthcare industry for 40 years, was an avid supporter of universal healthcare.He started that career in 1948 when he became an assistant editor at the American Hospital Association. He later went on to work at the Chicago Hospitals Council and the Illinois Hospital Association. In 1982, while serving as chairman of the Special Committee on Federal Funding of Mental Health and Other Services, the “Kinzer Report” was released. The report stated that while cost-containment was a national priority, “meeting the healthcare needs of all Americans, regardless of economic status, is still supported by most Americans.”While serving as president of the Massachusetts Hospital Association, Kinzer was criticized for his reluctance to accept the privatization of healthcare because he saw healthcare as a community service.When Massachusetts passed the universal health coverage bill in 1988, Kinzer was retired, but he was reportedly cheering as its “biggest supporter.”
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Sister Irene Kraus
1924-1998, Inducted in 1996
Sister Irene Kraus was a unique executive. She was known to dress up as Santa Claus or the Easter Bunny to cheer up women in a nursing home or children in a pediatric unit. Kraus became the first woman chair of the American Hospital Association in 1980, and she proclaimed at the time, “Call me Madame Chairman. I didn't work this hard to get here and have my title changed” to chairperson or chairwoman. Kraus also spent time as chairman of the Catholic Health Association in 1972 and 1973. But Kraus is best remembered as the founding president and CEO of the Daughters of Charity National Health System. She had first joined the Daughters of Charity of St. Vincent de Paul congregation in 1941 at the age of 17; she would remain a part of the Daughters of Charity for 54 years.She spent 1942 through 1949 as an elementary and high school teacher before entering the healthcare fray when she turned her attention to nursing. Her focus was always on the poor and underprivileged.
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Bernard J. Lachner
1927-2005, Inducted in 1998
Not many Health Care Hall-of-Famers can say they went from being a janitor at a hospital to an administrator at a hospital as Lachner did.In 1954, Lachner got a position as assistant director at the Ohio Tuberculosis Hospital, where he would attend healthcare roundtables at Ohio State University. A few years later, Lachner would move over to OSU to become associate administrator of its hospital.At the urging of his colleagues, Lachner would go on to develop a program in hospital management at Ohio State's college of medicine. He became the interim director.After leaving OSU, Lachner went to Evanston (Ill.) Hospital Corp. (now known as NorthShore University HealthSystem). At the time, Evanston Hospital had not made an operational profit in 100 years, but the year after Lachner took over, the hospital was in the black.A couple of Lachner's posts during his healthcare career included being one of the founders of the Voluntary Hospitals of America, or VHA, as well as governor of the American College of Healthcare Executives.
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Eleanor C. Lambertsen
1916-1998, Inducted in 1989
Lambertsen had a “profound” effect on nursing. She once said, “Whenever someone asks me if we have enough nurses, I'm tempted to reply: 'Enough for what?' ”From 1961 to 1970, Lambertsen headed the nursing school program at Columbia University in New York. She had worked her way up from bedside nurse to dean of one the country's most prestigious nursing schools. Her objective was to get administrators, physicians and nurses to work together for the common good of the patient.While in college, her dissertation at Columbia was on developing “team nursing,” rather than the traditional “functional nursing.” In her concept, registered nurses were responsible for patient care and meeting treatment goals. A year after her dissertation, the American Hospital Association came calling. Eventually she agreed to start a nursing division at the association. Later, she would become part of the World Health Organization's expert advisory council on nursing from 1961 to 1982.
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Mary Woodard Lasker
1900-1994, Inducted in 1990
The flu pandemic of 1918 played a key part of Lasker's life in more ways than one. She contracted but did not succumb to the flu during that time and saw how doctors knew little about influenza and other diseases.Eventually Lasker became a tireless supporter of medical research and medical education, and in 1942 she and her husband, Albert D. Lasker, played key roles in the reorganization and renaming of the Birth Control Federation to the Planned Parenthood Federation of America.Three years later she helped launch the American Cancer Society's first large-scale fundraising drive. She went on to become a Washington advocate for funding, and is credited with helping to increase federal funding for cancer research.The Lasker Foundation, which she and her husband started to provide medical research funding, still exists.
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Dr. Charles A. LeMaistre
1924- , Inducted in 2015
For LeMaistre, a former longtime president of the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, his association with the University of Texas spanned 37 years, including serving for seven years as chancellor. In that role, he led efforts that significantly expanded opportunities for students of diverse backgrounds and that opened UT branches throughout the state.He was the youngest member of the first U.S. surgeon general's Advisory Committee on Smoking and Health, which helped produce the landmark 1964 report citing use of tobacco products as a major risk factor in lung cancer.In 1978, LeMaistre became the second president of the MD Anderson Cancer Center, which he would lead until his retirement in 1996. Under his leadership, MD Anderson broadened its research programs and clinical-care services, raising its reputation to one of the top cancer centers in the world.
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Margaret Daugherty Lewis
1912- , Inducted in 1991
The home healthcare movement owes a lot to Lewis. Had it not been for a recurring disc problem in her back, however, she might not have entered the field.As a hospital nurse she often would have to lift heavy objects, which eventually became too difficult for her because of her back troubles. Because of those issues in the traditional hospital setting, Lewis decided to try something else.She then found her way into home healthcare. After years of devotion to home healthcare, she would eventually help found the National Association of Home Health Agencies. In 1982, the organization merged with the Council for Home Health Agencies and Community Health Services to become the National Association for Home Care.“Margaret Lewis was one of those unbelievably farsighted health professionals who was able to link the public and private sectors,” a former president of the Colorado Medical Society once said.
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Vernon R. Loucks Jr.
1935- , Inducted in 2006
When Loucks answered a help-wanted ad in the Chicago Tribune back in 1966, it's fair to say few could have predicted his rise to CEO of Baxter International 14 years later.During Loucks' years as CEO, the pharmaceuticals giant saw its sales more than quadruple to $5.7 billion, and its workforce grew by 12,000 workers.After a trip to Europe in 1968, Loucks came back with the idea to expand Baxter's business internationally. He approached Bill Graham, another Health Care Hall-of-Famer, with the idea of expanding into Africa, Australia, the Far East, Latin America and the Middle East. Five years later, sales exceeded $100 million.Loucks went on to become the first chairman of the Healthcare Leadership Council, which was formed in the early 1990s in response to the Clinton administration's goal of instituting healthcare reforms, which eventually would fail to pass in Congress.
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James E. "Jim" Ludlam
1914-2008, Inducted in 2002
The same day that Ludlam passed the California bar exam in 1940, he was sent to a Long Beach hospital to provide guidance on a tax matter. It was just the beginning of his healthcare legal career.In 1967, Ludlam would help form the American Health Lawyers Association in Washington, which, as of 2009, had some 10,000 members.During his career, Ludlam would influence legislation that strengthened tax-exempt status for hospitals and the Medical Injury Compensation Reform Act of 1975, which is widely regarded as the national model for tort reform. He also served as legal counsel for the California Hospital Association, Association of Western Hospitals and Hospital Council of Southern California.He once said, “Healthcare is a cause, at least it became a cause with me. And that's the way most people in this industry feel. It's really been a great career.”
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Malcolm T. MacEachern
1881-1956, Inducted in 1988
MacEachern, a physician from Canada, preached quality in medical-care delivery.As a mentor to hospital administrators, his book Hospital Organization and Management became a blueprint for many on how to properly run a hospital. MacEachern's efforts led to the creation of both the American College of Healthcare Executives and the Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations, now known as the Joint Commission.Later in life, MacEachern went into teaching. He established the first hospital administration MBA program at Northwestern University in Chicago, which is now called Kellogg's Health Management Program.
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John R. Mannix
1902-1990, Inducted in 1989
Mannix, recognizing the need for prepayment of hospital services, went on to found two Blue Cross plans.In 1944, Mannix was quoted as saying, “Unless steps are taken to make hospitals and medical care available to all Americans, all aspects of voluntary healthcare will ultimately be replaced by compulsory government plans.”Mannix is credited with developing the concept where hospital-care costs would be divided by everyone, regardless of whether they were hospitalized, which became the core of the Blue Cross programs.Before the days of Social Security, Mannix created an insurance program where employers would deduct money from workers' paychecks to help pay healthcare costs, a radical idea at the time.He also went on to become of the charter members of the American College of Hospital Administrators, the forerunner to today's American College of Healthcare Executives.
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Larry Mathis
1943- , Inducted in 2016
Mathis spent 26 years at the Methodist Hospital System in Houston, more than half of them as its president and CEO. He started at Methodist Hospital, where he served his administrative residency, and stayed with the organization for the rest of his career. He led a major expansion of the system, which upon his retirement comprised 16 member corporations and 37 affiliated hospitals in the U.S. and abroad, including facilities in Greece, Italy, Peru, Turkey and Venezuela.Mathis was also an early adopter of the patient-centered approach to healthcare delivery, focused on quality improvement and patient satisfaction. Methodist Hospital System would receive numerous national awards for its achievements.
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Charles Mayo
1865-1939, Inducted in 2009
The legacy of Charles Mayo, along with his older brother William, lives on in the world-renown Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn.The brothers put the focus of healthcare squarely on the patient with their “Patient comes first philosophy.”One of the major quality initiatives the brothers developed was aseptic surgery techniques that helped lead to low mortality rates. They also instituted a flat-salary system for physicians to promote a team concept. Charles Mayo was known as the calming presence who “smoothed the feathers that Will sometimes ruffled,” according to one Mayo biography.
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William Mayo
1861-1939, Inducted in 2009
The legacy of William Mayo, along with his younger brother, Charles, lives on in the world-renown Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn.The inseparable brothers lived by a philosophy of putting the patient first. The Mayos implemented a system that saw high volumes of patients but which produced low mortality rates. Eventually the Mayos began a fellowship program that helped lead to the current structure of post-graduate, formal specialty training.William Mayo became president of the American Medical Association in 1906. The Mayo brothers lived next door to each other and died in the same year.
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Foster G. McGaw
1897-1986, Inducted in 1989
When McGaw founded the American Hospital Supply company in Chicago in 1922, he was 25 years old. It would become the nation's largest hospital supply company, and Baxter Travenol Laboratories would go on to buy it for $3.8 billion in 1985.Besides being a savvy—and frugal—businessman, McGaw was a tremendously generous philanthropist. Exact figures were never kept at McGaw's insistence, but it is believed he donated more than $100 million, and maybe more than $200 million, to some 300 hospitals, colleges and associations during his life.McGaw would change the way medical supplies were purchased. Instead of having the physicians buy goods, he believed it would be more efficient to have the hospitals buy the supplies and give them to their doctors.McGaw ran his business by this motto: “I would never hire anybody that I wouldn't feel comfortable taking home to meet my family.”
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John Alexander McMahon
1921-2008, Inducted in 1995
When Edwin Crosby, then-CEO of the American Hospital Association, died unexpectedly in 1972, the search was on for a new leader. John Alexander McMahon, a relative newcomer to the healthcare industry with only a dozen years experience, got the job.McMahon's “fresh and from the outside” credentials were what drew the AHA's membership to select him as their leader. At the time, McMahon was the president of the North Carolina Blues.During the Carter administration, McMahon led the charge to control hospital spending from within rather than let Congress make a more heavy-handed decision for the industry. In 1980, the goal of his “V-E”—or “Voluntary Effort—campaign was to keep hospital spending growth at 11.8%. The hospitals did not reach that goal but the House of Representatives voted down President Jimmy Carter's call for regulated cost controls—a victory for McMahon and the AHA.After leaving the AHA in 1986, McMahon went to Duke University to become the chairman of the school's health administration department.
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Walter McNerney
1925-2005, Inducted in 1996
After leaving the University of Pittsburgh where he worked as an assistant coordinator of hospitals and clinics at the school's medical center, McNerney went on to found the University of Michigan's health administration program in 1955.At the time, he and a part-time secretary ran the whole program. Under his watch, the program would develop into one of the first to combine education, research and community service into a healthcare administration curriculum.In 1961, McNerney left teaching to become president of the Blue Cross Association, which included 65 Blues plans. In that role, he would help develop the Medicare and Medicaid legislation in President Lyndon B. Johnson's Great Society.In 1978, the Blue Cross Association merged with the Blue Shield Association, and McNerney was chosen as the first head of the merged organizations.
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Wade Mountz
1924- , Inducted in 2008
To many healthcare leaders in Louisville, Ky., Mountz was called “Mr. Norton.” Mountz spent 30 years of his career as the top executive at Norton Hospital, which would—after his retirement—grow to become Norton Healthcare.During that time, he oversaw the merger of Norton and Children's Hospital in 1969, and then in 1981 Kosair Crippled Children Hospital merged with Children's. At Norton, Mountz would bring immediate-care facilities with extended hours to the Louisville community, which, he later said, helped free up emergency rooms to treat the people who really had an emergency.During Mountz time at Norton, he co-founded the first offshore insurance firm that was created to address the malpractice crisis in the 1970s. He also served as chairman of the American Hospital Association and was the first chairman of the Voluntary Hospitals of America.
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Stanley R. Nelson
1926-2012, Inducted in 1999
Nelson helped transform the Henry Ford Health System from a beleaguered inner-city hospital into a huge not-for-profit health system.Nelson got his first CEO job at the age of 28 when he became the top executive at Parkview Hospital in Fort Wayne, Ind. After six years at Parkview, Nelson moved to Minneapolis to head Northwestern Hospital. His goal: to expand. And they did. “We merged out of strength,” he once said, “not out of crisis.”After four years, he went to Henry Ford where he focused on ambulatory care at a time when most hospitals focused on revenue from inpatient beds. He would later go on to co-found the Voluntary Hospitals of America.After retiring, he went into the consultant business and started the Scottsdale Institute in Minneapolis, which focuses on sharing information and experiences with healthcare information technology.
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D. Kirk Oglesby Jr.
1930- , Inducted in 2006
Oglesby began his career in healthcare administration at the age of 25 when he got the top job at Union Memorial Hospital in Monroe, N.C.But it was during his 30-year tenure as president of Anderson (S.C.) Memorial Hospital where he would become president of some of healthcare's most prominent organizations.He served as chairman of the American Hospital Association, American College of Healthcare Executives and the Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations.In fact, Oglesby went straight from his post at the AHA to one at the Joint Commission at a time when the two organizations weren't on the best of terms as the commission looked to revamp the hospital accreditation process.However, Oglesby's “steady, cool hand” helped assuage the situation, and ultimately the relationship improved.
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Scott Parker
1935- , Inducted in 2005
Parker was the founding president of Salt Lake City's Intermountain Healthcare, one of the first integrated healthcare delivery systems.Before coming to Intermountain in 1975, Parker spent 13 years as a healthcare executive in Minnesota, Arizona and California. The year before, the Mormon church decided to divest its 15-hospital system and hand it over to a newly created not-for-profit—for free.In those days, Intermountain faced major challenges in terms of buildings that needed refurbishing and the need for expansion to meet the community need and demand. Under Parker's leadership, the system would grow to 22 hospitals with an emphasis on state-of-the-art facilities that charged less than other similar hospitals.Parker would go on to be chairman of the American Hospital Association and president of the International Hospital Federation.“He was a fabulous boss,” one former colleague said of Parker. “He demanded good results, good work, but I always felt like he was my greatest supporter and wanted me to succeed.”
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Andrew Pattullo
1917-1996, Inducted in 1990
Pattullo got his start in healthcare as a switchboard operator at Lincoln (Neb.) General Hospital. Thirty-two years later, Pattullo would retire as senior vice president and trustee of the W.K. Kellogg Foundation, where, during his tenure, he would award $700 million in grants.He is credited with developing graduate and undergraduate programs in healthcare administration, and was influential in creating the American Hospital Association's Hospital Research and Educational Trust and the Association of University Programs in Health Administration.Pattullo once said, “From a philanthropic perspective, I have believed that a key ingredient in moving a field forward, and hospitals are a good example, is betting on people and particularly those people who have a conviction that the status quo is not good enough.”
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Dr. Vivian Pinn
1941- , Inducted in 2016
Pinn served as a physician, professor and researcher, dedicating her career advocating for women's health issues and working to eliminate healthcare disparities.Upon entering the University of Virginia School of Medicine in 1963, she was the only woman and minority student in her class. She would graduate with honors. Following a postgraduate fellowship at Harvard Medical School, she served in a variety of clinical and academic roles at Tufts University in Boston and several of its affiliated organizations, as well as Howard University in Washington, D.C. Because of her longtime clinical and research interest in the field, in 1991 she was appointed director of the Office of Research on Women's Health, part of the National Institutes of Health. She would remain in the role for nearly 20 years. Pinn also was a mentor to many, particularly encouraging minority women to pursue careers in medicine and science.
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Dr. Henry Plummer
1874-1936, Inducted in 2016
Plummer was a skilled clinician and innovator who was instrumental in founding the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota.Plummer, who joined the fledgling clinic in 1901, was a gifted physician, but he also recognized how technology, organizational design and even architecture could play a role in the healing process. Dr. William Mayo, one of the two brothers who founded the clinic, would later say that hiring Plummer was his “best day's work.”. It was Plummer who helped develop the concept of a comprehensive medical record at Mayo, a dossier in which all the information about a patient could be found in one place. He is also credited with designing the system that led to the hallmark of the clinic, an integrated, multidisciplinary approach to medical practice. He died of a blood clot in 1936 at age 62.
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Boone Powell Sr.
1912-1996, Inducted in 1988
Powell is credited with starting the country's first residency program for hospital administrators.He initially wanted to go into medicine himself, but the Great Depression made that dream an impossibility, so he took a job working with the federal government building healthcare facilities. That experience helped him land a job at what was then an overcrowded and deteriorating hospital in Texas, Baylor University Medical Center.Powell would go on to spend three decades as CEO of the Dallas-based medical center, helping to grow its size and reputation. He later would become president of the Baylor University Medical Center Foundation, which was created on a $5 million endowment to support the activities of the medical center.
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Haynes Rice
1932-1991, Inducted in 2000
Rice was described as a “tree-shaker” by a former colleague.Rice fought for quality healthcare for all people, regardless of their ability to pay, and pushed for more opportunities for minorities in healthcare administration. Known as “The Godfather” to many African-Americans in health administration, Rice helped found the National Association of Health Services Executives, a black professional organization.He would serve as the organization's fourth president from 1970 to 1971.In the late 1980s, Rice helped establish the Boarder Babies Project at Howard University in Washington. At the time, some babies would be left living in hospitals for as long as three years. Rice went to the Council of the District of Columbia and successfully lobbied to expedite the process of declaring those children wards of the state.
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Elliott C. Roberts Sr.
1927- , Inducted in 1998
During Roberts' career, he served as CEO at several major inner-city public hospitals and taught at many universities. But his focus was always on public health and minority leadership in healthcare.In the 1960s, Roberts served as executive director at Mercy Douglass Hospital in Philadelphia, Harem (N.Y.) Hospital and Detroit General Hospital. In Detroit, Roberts led the planning process to reconstruct and reorganize the old facility as a joint project with Wayne State University Medical School.But in 1980, Roberts was ready for a career change. He moved to Chicago from New Orleans to take a job in the Hyatt Medical Management Services consulting group. However, he wouldn't stay long. Soon he would return to healthcare as CEO of what was then known as Cook County Hospital in Chicago.After four years, Roberts moved back to Louisiana to become CEO of the state-controlled system, a position he would hold for 10 years. He later served a stint as chairman of the Institute for Diversity in Health Management, which created an annual scholarship in his honor.
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Sister Mary Roch Rocklage
1935- , Inducted in 2011
As fewer young Catholic women chose to enter the sisterhood in the decades after World War II, it became gradually inevitable that nuns would no longer be exclusively running Catholic healthcare facilities.Sister Mary Roch Rocklage is among those who led Catholic healthcare across that bridge, while simultaneously leading a disparate group of hospitals across 28 cities into the integrated Sisters of Mercy Health System.“We could see back then already that there would be fewer sisters,” says Rocklage, who served as the health system's first president and CEO from 1986 to 1999 and board chair from 1999 to 2003.“We wanted to make sure the structure we put in place would ensure that the purpose and mission would go forward. … We focused a lot on, 'How do we prepare all of our leaders to be effective leaders, understand who we are, and best steward our resources?' "
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C. Rufus Rorem
1894-1988, Inducted in 1988
Without Rorem's foresight, the healthcare payment landscape might be completely different today.During the Hoover administration, when hospitals struggled because patients couldn't pay their medical bills, Rorem developed an idea as principal author of a report titled The Costs of Medical Care. The report offered a solution to payment problems where people could buy some sort of medical insurance. Radical at the time, Rorem's concept led to the development of Blue Cross and Blue Shield.While “saving for a rainy day” was what was preached at the time, Rorem knew that sickness was unpredictable. So his prepayment system was designed to help patients and doctors alike.In 1964, Rorem became a consultant to the Health and Hospital Planning Council of Southern New York, which was the country's first area-wide planning agency.
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Austin Ross
1929- , Inducted in 2010
Former colleagues at Virginia Mason Medical Center in Seattle, where Ross served as executive administrator, say he exerted his influence subtly but unmistakably on many fronts, perhaps most notably when coaxing the birth of the integrated delivery system and reaching out to both rural and inner-city providers.Ross served at the Virginia Mason organization for more than three decades, first joining as an assistant administrator in 1955. He was named CEO of Virginia Mason Hospital in 1968 and became the top executive of the integrated network in 1977. He held that position until his retirement in 1991.Ross enjoyed a second career as a professor of public health after his retirement from Virginia Mason. “I loved teaching. I feel it's so important to mentor people,” said Ross, who retired from teaching in 1999. Of his six books and more than 50 articles, Ross' most celebrated work is likely a textbook that he co-authored, Ambulatory Care Management, first published in 1984 and most recently updated in 1998, that's still used in universities across the country.
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Ruth Rothstein
1923-2013, Inducted in 2004
Believing that healthcare is a right and not a privilege, Rothstein spent her career keeping two Chicago-area hospitals alive that served the poor.As president and CEO of Mount Sinai Hospital on Chicago's West Side, she was able to retain staff despite losing its medical school partner. Then, at an age when most people are contemplating retirement, Rothstein went to work at chronically underfunded Cook County Hospital in Chicago—which became the inspiration for the hit TV show “ER”—where Rothstein's job was to rebuild the obsolete facility.Eventually Rothstein's work would help pave the way for the John H. Stroger Jr. Hospital of Cook County, which opened in 2002 as a replacement for Cook County Hospital. Also Rothstein expanded Cook County's community clinics from six to 30, which led to the Ruth M. Rothstein CORE Center, a clinic for the prevention, care and research of HIV/AIDS and other infectious diseases.
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Sister Mary Maurita Sengelaub
1918- , Inducted in 2013
In the late 1970s, shortly after giving up her post as head of the Catholic Hospital Association, Sister Mary Maurita Sengelaub didn't seek another position at the pinnacle of healthcare administration. Instead, she threw herself into a campaign to provide healthcare for seasonal farmworkers in states such as Alabama, Florida and the Carolinas.
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Mother Elizabeth Ann Seton
1774-1821, Inducted in 1988
The daughter of Richard Bayley, the first health officer of New York, Seton had healthcare in her blood.Her love of public charity led to her commitment to healthcare. Eventually, she would become the first U.S. citizen to be canonized.Seton converted to Catholicism after her husband died on a trip to Italy. After his death, Seton moved her family from New York to Baltimore and established the Sisters of Charity of St. Joseph in Emmitsburg, which would become a Catholic network that would eventually include schools, orphanages, hospitals, child-care centers and nurseries.Two years after her death, the sisters began their first formal health service at the Baltimore Infirmary, a public institution of the University of Maryland. This was the first time a religious community was involved in the institutional care of the sick in this country.
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Robert Shelton
1918-2003, Inducted in 2004
Shelton was considered to be the vanguard of healthcare financial management.During his 19 years as executive director of the Healthcare Financial Management Association—once known as the American Association of Hospital Accountants—the group's membership grew to 18,000 from 3,200.During his tenure, Shelton helped launch and develop the HFMA's Annual National Institute; he also helped develop Healthcare Financial Management magazine, now known as HFM.The Medicare program went into effect in 1966, and Shelton played a key role in developing educational programs to make the program run smoothly for the government and the hospitals. After retiring, Shelton wrote a history of the HFMA called From Acorn to Oak.
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Robert Sigmond
1920- , Inducted in 2001
In the 1950s, Sigmond began advocating for community participation in healthcare, a concept he would push until, eventually, sweeping mandates were instituted in the 1970s.Sigmond's focus was always on the patient, and it would frustrate him that administrators during the time would “concern themselves with the problems of the medical staff, the hospital building—it was never about the people,” he once said.After working as a statistician in Philadelphia with the Governor's Commission on Hospital Facilities, Standards and Organization, he would meet fellow Hall-of-Famer C. Rufus Rorem at the Hospital Council of Philadelphia. Rorem would become Sigmond's mentor, and the two would go on to collaborate on establishing the Blue Cross plans.During Sigmond's career, he would also become director of fiscal studies at Albert Einstein Medical Center in Philadelphia, serve as a longtime adviser to the Blue Cross and Blue Shield Association and work as a consultant to the American Hospital Association.
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C. Thomas Smith
1938- , Inducted in 2006
After being introduced to the field of healthcare by a fraternity brother and getting a job as an intern at what is now known as Baptist Health, Little Rock, Ark., Smith would develop a love for healthcare that would last throughout his 30 years in hospital administration.Fourteen of those years were spent as president of Yale-New Haven (Conn.) Hospital. At Yale-New Haven, Smith oversaw physical improvements to the hospital while at the same time producing stronger results. He also introduced one of the first diversity training programs in the country back in the 1980s.In 1991, he became president and CEO of VHA, Irving, Texas, where he remained until his retirement in 2003.During his tenure, he would focus hospitals on improving clinical performance. When he started, VHA had roughly 700 members and the alliance was handling about $4 billion in procurements annually. By the time Smith retired, it had some 2,200 hospitals and $22 billion worth of purchasing.
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Anne Ramsay Somers
1913-2008, Inducted in 1992
In the late 1940s, Herman Miles “Red” Somers asked his wife to write a chapter on what was then called workmen's compensation—not workers' compensation—for a book he was writing on Social Security. Anne Ramsay Somers didn't write just one chapter. Instead, she wound up researching and writing an entire book that was published in 1954.But that was just the beginning.Some seven years later she went on to publish what many consider a landmark book titled Doctors, Patients and Healthcare Insurance: The Organization and Financing of Medical Care. The book examined alternative models of healthcare delivery in the world and to use the information as a way of determining physician fees and universal, government-run healthcare programs.Anne Ramsay Somers went on to become an adviser to HHS on Medicare reimbursement and then an adjunct professor of environmental and community medicine at the University of Medicine & Dentistry of New Jersey Robert Wood Johnson Medical School.
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Andrew Taylor Still
1828-1917, Inducted in 1993
At the age of 63, Still founded the world's first school of osteopathic medicine. Today, the Kirksville (Mo.) College of Osteopathic Medicine is just one of the schools at the A.T. Still University in Kirksville and Mesa, Ariz.Still was an outspoken critic in the 19th century against the misuse of drugs, such as morphine, because of its addictive qualities. Still's lifework was to develop a new system of medical thinking that focused on preventing disease and promoted good health rather than only treating illnesses.Still created the neologism “osteopathy” by combining the Greek word “osteon,” meaning “bone,” and “pathos,” which means “to suffer.” He believed in body unity and treating the whole person, chiefly through the manipulation of bones and nerves.An outspoken abolitionist during the time of slavery, Still was reportedly frequently stopped by groups threatening his life if he didn't change his politics. However, Still was spared because of his willingness to treat the men's wives and neighbors.
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Richard Stull
1916-1982, Inducted in 1996
Stull went from playing football at Duke University to professor of health administration.During his career, Stull would be credited with expanding the educational program and design planning at the University of California and strengthening the American College of Healthcare Administrators, now known as the American College of Healthcare Executives.At the University of California at Berkley, Stull initiated a graduate program in hospital administration, the first of its kinds west of the Mississippi.For a brief period in the 1960s, Stull worked for Booz Allen & Hamilton as director of its health and medical administration division. During that period, he designed a 25-year master plan for Duke. But it was his time at the ACHA that was most notable. When he took over in 1965, the group was $103,000 in debt. He would stay on until 1978, and during that time, “the college grew into a true professional organization under Dick's leadership,” a former hospital CEO once said.Also, from 1965 to 1969, Stull served on the White House Council on Aging, Nutrition and Health.
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Luther Terry
1911-1985, Inducted in 2004
Terry, a former U.S. surgeon general, quit smoking in late 1963. A few months later, Terry made it his mission to get others to join him.In January 1964, he released the first Surgeon General's Report on Smoking and Health. That groundbreaking report concluded that smoking causes cancer, chronic bronchitis and could contribute to cardiovascular disease and emphysema and other cancers.Terry's report was the progenitor of the warning labels commonly found on cigarettes and other tobacco products.Terry's first government job came in 1942 when he went to the Public Health Service Hospital in Baltimore. A year later, he would become chief of medicine. He then went on to work for the National Heart Institute in Bethesda, Md., and the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine before President John F. Kennedy tapped him as surgeon general in 1961.His focus in the beginning was on seat-belt safety and improvements in American Indian healthcare.
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John Devereaux Thompson
1917-1992, Inducted in 1995
In 1967, Thompson and his Yale University colleague, Robert Fetter, began developing a system for coding medical treatments, called diagnosis-related groups, or DRGs.Some 13 years later, HHS authorized the state of New Jersey to use DRGs to test the system. Three years later, the Health Care Financing Administration, the predecessor of the CMS, started implementing the system on a widespread basis for Medicare reimbursement.Most of Thompson's career was spent at Yale. He graduated from Yale with a master's degree in hospital administration in1950, and returned to his alma mater in 1956 as a professor. He stayed with the university until he retired in 1988.During his tenure, Thompson held the titles of professor of public health and nurse administration, associate dean of the school of medicine and chief of the health services and administration division. In 1991, Thompson came out of retirement to fill a vacant post at Yale as chairman of the health policy division.
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Samuel J. Tibbitts
1924-1994, Inducted in 1997
At the age of 6, Tibbitts contracted Scarlet fever. It was at that point he decided to follow a career in healthcare.After graduating with the second class at the new graduate school of public health and hospital administration at the University of California at Los Angeles, Tibbitts became an administrative resident at the California Hospital Medical Center. By the time he turned 35, he became the facility's administrator.Tibbitts would go on to co-found the PPO Alliance in 1975, which by the mid-1990s was one of the largest PPOs in the country. He also co-founded PacifiCare Health Systems, which became one of the country's most profitable HMOs.During Tibbitts' time as chairman of the American Hospital Association, he pushed for efficiency on a national level. He persuaded the AHA, the American Medical Association and six other organizations to focus their efforts on cutting medical costs.
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Robert E. “Bob” Toomey
1916-2001, Inducted in 1993
Toomey went south in 1953. He left his job as administrator for North County Hospitals in upstate New York and went to Greenville, S.C., to become the general director and eventually CEO of Greenville General Hospital.Recognizing hospitals could offer more cost-effective patient care through a network managed by one organization, Toomey set off to create the Greenville Hospital System, one of the nation's first regional multihospital systems.Back in 1993, the then-president of the system said, “It is not an overstatement to say that Bob Toomey's concept of the hospital system is clearly the precursor of today's healthcare network.”In the 1950s, well before the Civil Rights Movement, Toomey desegregated Greenville General Hospital, breaking down racial barriers in the workforce, patient locations, dining rooms and restrooms.Later, in the 1970s, Toomey would hire staffers who would handle patient complaints, which was a first for hospitals in the era.
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Lillian Wald
1867-1940, Inducted in 1988
Wald founded the Henry Street Visiting Nurse Service in New York in the late 1800s, and she was a pioneer in developing a public health nursing program in the U.S.Wald's organization evolved into the Visiting Nurse Service of New York City, which she directed for 40 years.Her calling as a nurse was to treat the large immigrant population that steadily entered the country seeking a better way of life. But many found their new homeland to be anything but paradise with crowded conditions and a reported death rate was high.Wald would eventually begin teaching home nursing classes for immigrants and taught residents how to care for themselves.
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Robert Waller
1937- , Inducted in 2003
Waller played an instrumental role in transforming the Mayo Clinic into the fully integrated national healthcare system that it is today.Until 1986, the Mayo Clinic hadn't even owned a hospital—until Waller became a key proponent for diversification as part of Mayo's board of trustees. Two years later, Waller became president and CEO of the Mayo Foundation.Ever modest, Waller once said, “CEOs at Mayo are not the traditional chief executives you see in business and the corporate world. You have to understand that as I progressed through the leadership ranks. I was part of a team.”In 1993, Waller was appointed to the Jackson Hole Group, a well-known healthcare think tank. He also served two years as chairman of the Healthcare Leadership Council, and would later serve as an adviser on President George W. Bush's transition advisory team.
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Donald Wegmiller
1938- , Inducted in 2013
Consolidating hospitals and slashing a hospital's bed count were considered unusual decades ago in the once-sleepy world of the hospital industry. But Donald Wegmiller is one of the industry leaders who helped make such moves much more commonplace, and in the process helped to invent the integrated delivery system.
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Stuart A. Wesbury Jr.
1933- , Inducted in 2005
Wesbury worked in many different fields during his career—from pharmacy to hospital administration to academics—before serving as president of the American College of Healthcare Executives for 12 years.One of Wesbury's most controversial maneuvers turned out to be when he pushed for the organization to change its name to the ACHE from its original name—the American College of Hospital Administrators.During his time at the ACHE, Wesbury focused on broadening the membership to include more minorities and women, and his efforts led to the creation of the ACHE's Institute of Diversity. He also increased military and academic involvement, which according a past chairman of the ACHE helped expose the military to contemporary healthcare delivery systems, issues and solutions.Overall membership grew 70% during his tenure as president.Wesbury became a CEO at the age of 34 at Shand's Teaching Hospital and Clinic at the University of Florida at Gainesville. He then received his doctorate in economics and business administration in 1972. A few years later, he moved to the University of Missouri in Columbia to become an associate professor and director of the Health Services Management Program.
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Kenneth T. Wessner
1922-1994, Inducted in 1992
A deeply religious man, Wessner adhered to and abided by the principles of ServiceMaster: “To honor God in all we do. To help people develop. To pursue excellence. To grow profitably.”Wessner didn't join ServiceMaster until 1954 at the age of 32. Before that, worked for several years for Club Aluminum Co. in Chicago. Twenty-one years later, Wessner had worked his way up to CEO of the company. He eventually would become chairman of ServiceMaster, a provider of management services to hospitals and healthcare businesses.The company signed its first healthcare-related contract in 1962 with Lutheran General Hospital, Park Ridge, Ill., to have its managers direct the hospital's personnel with cleaning services. During the first year of the contract, the hospital reported a 50% drop in bacteria prevalence thanks to ServiceMaster's leadership.Eventually, that success would lead to more and more hospital contracts and the implementation of quality-assurance programs.
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Dan Wilford
1940- , Inducted in 2009
Wilford, the former president of Houston's Memorial Hermann Healthcare System, knows how to follow a playbook.The former CEO—who was also a National Football League official—was instrumental in creating the system out of a merger between Memorial Hospital in Houston and Memorial Hermann Healthcare System in the Texas Medical Center.In 1996, the same year that the merger took place, Wilford was given the Gold Medal Award from the American College of Healthcare Executives. A former colleague once said about Wilford, “I remember him saying, 'It was impossible to do the wrong thing right. … If we do the right thing, the bottom line and financial success will follow.' ”
Dr. Louis Sullivan
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Inducted in 2019
Dr. Louis Sullivan can remember wanting to be a doctor since he was a young child. As an African-American growing up in rural Georgia in the 1930s, he might have seemed an unlikely candidate for the competition inherent in attending medical school.
“We lived in a rural community where education for blacks in those years was really very marginal,” Sullivan said.
But his parents appreciated the value of a good education and were willing to go to great lengths to get one for Louis and his older brother, Walter. His mother, a teacher, and his father, a funeral home operator and ambulance service owner, arranged at different times for the brothers to live with relatives or friends in towns where schools offered blacks a better opportunity to learn. So, for part of his grade school years he stayed with a relative in Savannah, Ga., and attended junior and senior high school in Atlanta while living with family friends.
That decision was just one of many that Sullivan’s parents made that cumulatively got him on track to become, first and foremost, a doctor, but also an activist for racial equity, an educator of physicians and HHS secretary. Now Sullivan can add the Modern Healthcare Health Care Hall of Fame to his stack of awards and honors.
John King
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Inducted in 2019
The healthcare industry continues to experience transformation at a feverish pace, with ongoing consolidation, a realignment of operations away from hospitals, and surging demand for more consumer choice.
But for longtime health system executive John King, a much earlier round of industry change is what launched his career in the 1960s. Back then, “system” was still an emerging concept in the industry, and the same could be said for the profession of healthcare administrator.
King, 80, whose professional path took him to faith-based systems in Minneapolis, South Bend, Ind., Chicago and Portland, Ore., in an arc spanning nearly 40 years, has been inducted into the Health Care Hall of Fame for his lifetime achievements not only in building healthcare organizations but in community service during and after his career.
Karen Davis
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Inducted in 2019
Karen Davis pushed for broader coverage under Medicare and Medicaid since their inception more than 50 years ago. The former leader of the Commonwealth Fund and deputy secretary at HHS has made economics a key part of her career and has had a lasting influence in how economic tools are applied to healthcare.
“She helped found the discipline of healthcare economics, and worked in and alongside government to formulate path-breaking national healthcare proposals for universal healthcare, including the Affordable Care Act,” said Dr. David Blumenthal, who succeeded Davis as Commonwealth Fund president in 2012 and formerly served as the national coordinator of health information technology.
The Health Care Hall of Fame is the industry's most prestigious recognition program. In partnership with the American College of Healthcare Executives (ACHE), Modern Healthcare honors the men and women who have made outstanding contributions to the healthcare industry throughout their professional tenure.