Top 25 Women in Healthcare - 2013

Welcome to the 2013 gallery of the Top 25 Women in Healthcare. The recognition program honors exceptional female healthcare executives who are making a positive difference in the industry. The honorees represent all sectors of healthcare, including hospitals, health systems, insurance, government, trade and professional organizations, and labor. (The honorees are listed alphabetically.)

Since 2008, Leah Binder has been president and CEO of the Leapfrog Group, a not-for-profit organization whose mission is to increase transparency at hospitals and health systems and improve safety, quality and affordability. The Leapfrog Hospital Survey reports data on quality and safety measures. Its Hospital Safety Score assigns safety ratings to hospitals as letter grades. Before joining Leapfrog, Binder spent nine years in executive positions at the Franklin Community Health Network, Farmington, Maine. She also was a senior policy adviser for health services to New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani.Top 25 Women in Healthcare

Maureen Bisognano is president and CEO of the Institute for Healthcare Improvement. She has served the patient-safety organization since 1995, when she joined as executive vice president and chief operating officer. Bisognano, 60, was named CEO in 2010 when Dr. Donald Berwick left to become CMS administrator. She has focused the organization on global efforts to improve patient safety, access to HIV/AIDS treatments, and care for women and children—as well as helping providers in the U.S. adapt to reform.Top 25 Women in Healthcare

Marna Borgstrom joined Yale-New Haven Hospital in 1979 as an administrative resident. Since then, she's moved up the ranks through various administrative and executive positions. In 2005, she became president and CEO of the hospital and Yale New Haven Health System, New Haven, Conn. Borgstrom, 59, led Yale-New Haven's 2012 acquisition of the Hospital of St. Raphael, also in New Haven. It's expected to save $650 million in construction costs and an additional $300 million in operating expenses over five years.Top 25 Women in Healthcare

Boudreaux

Effective May 13, Deborah Bowen will become president and CEO of the American College of Healthcare Executives. Bowen, 57, joined the 40,000-plus member professional society in 1992 as director of government relations and later as vice president of ACHE's division of administration. After leaving for several years, she returned as executive vice president and chief operating officer, leading the group for the past decade in areas such as finance, marketing, communications and member services.Top 25 Women in Healthcare

Karen Daley is president of the American Nurses Association, a professional organization representing the interests of the nation's 3.1 million registered nurses. Daley, 60, was elected to the position in 2010 and then re-elected to another two-year term last year. She served as president of the Massachusetts Association of Registered Nurses and the Massachusetts Center for Nursing. Daley also was a nurse for more than 25 years at Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston.Top 25 Women in Healthcare

As president of the National Business Group on Health, Helen Darling is responsible for the not-for-profit, 300-plus member organization that advocates on health policy issues from the perspectives of large employers. Major initiatives the group has launched include the Institute on Innovation in Workforce Well-being; the Institute on Health, Productivity and Human Capital; and the Institute on Health Care Costs and Solutions. Darling, 71, leads the latter, which seeks to address healthcare quality and affordability issues.Top 25 Women in Healthcare

Susan DeVore has been president and CEO of the Premier healthcare alliance since 2009. The Charlotte, N.C.-based organization, which includes 2,800 partner hospitals and health systems and more than 93,000 nonacute-care sites, works with its members to improve supply-chain management, lower healthcare costs, integrate data and improve community health. DeVore, 54, joined Premier in 2003 as president of its supply chain division and was later promoted to chief operating officer.Top 25 Women in Healthcare

Hamburg

Patricia Hemingway Hall began her career as an intensive-care nurse in the 1970s, but since 2008, has led Health Care Service Corp. HCSC covers more than 13 million members in Illinois, New Mexico, Oklahoma and Texas. As president and CEO, Hemingway Hall, 60, has grown the Blues insurer by more than 1 million members and increased its health initiatives. One such effort is Healthy Kids, Healthy Families, a program to improve the health of at least 1 million children by 2014 through nutrition, physical activity and disease prevention.Top 25 Women in Healthcare

Dr. Ardis Hoven, an internal medicine and infectious disease specialist, is president-elect of the American Medical Association. Her term as president will begin in June, making her the third woman to hold that position. Hoven, 68, previously served as president of the Kentucky Medical Association, where she first got involved in the 1980s to advocate on behalf of patients with HIV/AIDS. She has been on the AMA board of trustees since 2005, serving as chair from 2010 to 2011. Top 25 Women in Healthcare

Karen Ignagni is president and CEO of America's Health Insurance Plans, the chief lobbying group for the health insurance sector. Ignagni, 59, who once served as director of the AFL-CIO's department of employee benefits, led the American Association of Health Plans from 1993 to 2003, when it merged with another association to become AHIP. Ignagni regularly testifies before Congress on a variety of healthcare legislation and has been a critic of many provisions included in the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. Top 25 Women in Healthcare

Sister Carol Keehan has been president and CEO of the Catholic Health Association since 2005. She's one of the leading voices in the U.S. advocating for Roman Catholic healthcare, which includes more than 600 hospitals and 1,400 long-term care and other facilities nationwide, making it the largest group of not-for-profit health providers in the nation. Keehan, 69, has been a vocal supporter of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, although she has raised concerns over the law's effects on religious liberty.Top 25 Women in Healthcare

Lavizzo-Mourey

O'Kane

Sharon O'Keefe has more than 30 years of healthcare experience, initially as a critical-care nurse and then in hospital leadership. Before she was named president of the University of Chicago Medical Center, O'Keefe, 60, was chief operating officer of Barnes-Jewish Hospital in St. Louis and then president of Loyola University Medical Center in Maywood, Ill. Since February 2011, O'Keefe has led the University of Chicago Medical Center, an academic medical center that employs more than 9,500 and has revenue of more than $1 billion. Top 25 Women in Healthcare

Since 2005, Debra Osteen has been senior vice president of Universal Health Services, one of the nation's largest for-profit hospital chains. Osteen, 57, who has been with the company for 29 years, also serves as president of its behavioral health division. When Osteen took that role in 1999, the company had 23 behavioral health facilities, a number that now stands at 197. Osteen was instrumental in UHS' $3.3 billion acquisition of Psychiatric Solutions and its 71 behavioral-health hospitals and other facilities in 2010.Top 25 Women in Healthcare

Judith Persichilli is president and CEO of Catholic Health East, a health system that includes 39 acute-care hospitals, 26 long-term-care facilities and other operations in 11 Eastern states. Persichilli helped lead CHE's planned merger with Trinity Health, a consolidation that would result in the U.S.'s third-largest not-for-profit health system with combined revenue of more than $13 billion. The deal, announced last October, is expected to close this spring, and Persichilli was named interim president and CEO of the new system. Persichilli joined CHE in 2003 as executive vice president of its mid-Atlantic division. Top 25 Women in Healthcare

Nancy Schlichting, 58, joined Detroit's Henry Ford Health System in 1998 as senior vice president and chief administrative officer, but has served as president and CEO since 2003. She is credited for leading the $4 billion system with more than 23,000 employees through a financial turnaround, helping it to start turning a profit in 2003 after previously posting losses. In 2011, Schlichting accepted the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award, largely earned for Henry Ford's “No Harm” patient-safety campaign.Top 25 Women in Healthcare

Sebelius

As acting administrator for the CMS since December 2011, Marilyn Tavenner oversees the $757 billion federal agency that provides healthcare coverage to 100 million Americans through Medicare, Medicaid and other programs. The CMS is also responsible for leading the implementation of insurance reforms and health insurance exchanges under the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. Before being appointed to the top job at the CMS, Tavenner, 61, a former nurse, served as Medicare's principal deputy administrator.Top 25 Women in Healthcare

Irene Thompson was named president and CEO of the University HealthSystem Consortium in 2007. Before joining UHC—an alliance of 119 academic medical centers and nearly 300 affiliated hospitals that works to improve their clinical, operational and financial performance—Thompson, 65, served as president and CEO of the University of Kansas Medical Center for more than a decade. At UHC, Thompson is responsible for overseeing operations, strategy and member engagement.Top 25 Women in Healthcare

Wakefield

Weis