Day One Speakers

David Newman-Toker, MD, PhD

David E. Newman-Toker is a Professor of Neurology, Ophthalmology and Otolaryngology at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. He also holds joint appointments in Emergency Medicine and Health Sciences Informatics at the School of Medicine, as well as in Epidemiology and Health Policy and Management at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. Dr. Newman-Toker also serves as the President of the Society to Improve Diagnosis in Medicine. Dr. Newman-Toker’s academic mission is to eliminate harms from diagnostic errors and maximize the accuracy and efficiency of diagnostic testing in clinical practice. He is as a core faculty member of the Armstrong Institute for Patient Safety and Quality, where he serves as Director of the Johns Hopkins Armstrong Institute Center for Diagnostic Excellence, focused on enhancing diagnostic safety, quality and value. Dr. Newman-Toker’s research focuses on preventing missed strokes in the emergency department and primary care, especially among patients presenting with acute, severe vertigo or dizziness.

Julia Prentice, PhD

Julia Prentice leads the research portfolio at the Betsy Lehman Center. Her projects focus on measuring the prevalence of adverse events, understanding the public perception regarding the long-term impacts of medical error and the health system response, and evaluating the effectiveness of key quality improvement initiatives. Her previous work in the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) focused on advancing the ability of healthcare systems to enact evidence-based policy and clinical practice. She was the first to find a consistent relationship between longer appointment wait times for VA healthcare services and poorer patient-level satisfaction and health outcomes. In 2013, this work provided the evidence base for a change in access metrics used by the VA and helped to address the access crisis in 2014. Prentice received her doctorate in public health from UCLA, where she also earned her master’s degree in public health. As an undergraduate she studied biology and sociology at Grinnell College.

Dana Siegal, RN, CPHRM, CPPS

Dana Siegal is the director of patient safety for CRICO Strategies, where she provides analytical and educational services to leading academic medical centers, community hospitals and physician practices on the issues of medical liability and patient safety. She evaluates the risk profiles of healthcare organizations throughout the country, assessing where current vulnerabilities exist and making recommendations for prioritizing action plans. Additionally, she provides detailed analysis of medical malpractice claims, with a specific focus on Diagnostic, OB, EHR and Emergency Medicine. Siegal has 30 years’ experience in healthcare quality and risk management, ranging from front line clinical care as an emergency room nurse, to front line risk management where she was involved in all aspects of incident reporting, sentinel event management, root cause analysis and credentialing. She has worked closely with clinicians and administrators in development and implementation of incident reporting systems and has extensive experience in the analysis of hospital and provider performance data and development of patient safety initiatives in a variety of clinical practice settings. Siegal is a Registered Nurse and is a Certified Professional in Healthcare Risk Management and a Certified Professional in Patient Safety.