Leadership in Action: Fixing the System: Breaking the Glass Ceiling in Health Care

CAREER LADDERS

Given this dynamic and challenging environment, maximizing effective leadership talent is critical to the survival of this nation's health care delivery system. To date, however, the realization of individuals’ full leadership potential has occurred only to a very limited extent. In other words the glass ceiling still exists in the U.S. health care system.

For example, the American College of Healthcare Executives (ACHE) reported in early 2005 that only 20 percent of the CEOs in the nearly six thousand hospitals tracked by the American Hospital Association were women. In a 2000 study ACHE found that women earned an average of 19 percent less than men, even when the women and men had equal amounts of experience and education. In ...