How we chose the 100 Most Influential People in Healthcare for 2021

This year’s 100 Most Influential Leaders in Healthcare may surprise you.

While some of the individuals honored this year are repeats, others are not what you might call the usual suspects–and that’s because it wasn’t a usual year.

Already rocked by a global pandemic, the healthcare industry underwent more significant changes in 2021. The first came right before the end of 2020 when the world was promised a return to normalcy with the arrival and fast approval of vaccines. Their safety and the mandates aimed at bringing down the death toll were hotly debated and led to further divisions, in society and between employers and employees. The result has been skyrocketing costs to recruit and retain employees and transformative changes to many work environments as employers compete for talent.

Meanwhile, an industry that had long lagged behind its peers at truly serving the patient, became consumer obsessed. Digitization of healthcare became an imperative with telehealth leading the pack of digital health funding. Many of those moves could not have come without outside investment, which hit a record high of $15 billion in just the first half of 2021.

Our 100 Most also looked to transform their own ranks to become more diverse and inclusive, and while many of them still have a long way to go, DEI became an obvious business imperative.

Take a look at our 2021 ranking to learn what role these industry giants played in the evolution of healthcare.