Sessions
The Financial and Human Cost of Medical Error: How Massachusetts Leveraged New Data to Make the Case for a Statewide Action Plan to Improve Patient Safety
2:15 PM - 3:30 PM Fri
Julia Prentice leads the research portfolio at the Betsy Lehman Center. 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. Julia’s other research has focused on using quasi-experimental analyses of retrospective observational data to identify causal relationships between treatment and outcomes in chronic diseases, such as diabetes and atrial fibrillation. Julia received her Doctor of Philosophy in Public Health from UCLA, where she also earned her Master of Science in Public Health. As an undergraduate, she studied biology and sociology at Grinnell College.