Byline: Mike Colias

While working for Blue Cross in Texas in the mid-'90s, Patricia Hemingway Hall would drive 60 miles from her Dallas office to meet in a motel conference room to haggle over reimbursement rates with an executive from a small rural hospital.

"Pat was tough but always willing to find common ground,'' says Ray Thompson, CEO of Mother Frances Hospital in Tyler, Texas, and Ms. Hemingway Hall's foe in those weeks-long talks. "She's got an uncommon empathy for the person on the other side of the table.''

That trait-one she attributes to her time as an intensive care nurse in the 1970s-will prove valuable this fall, when she becomes CEO of the parent ...