Rockville Institute Affiliates in
Health Care Quality
Deborah J. Carpenter, MSN
W. Sherman Edwards, MBA
Vasudha Narayanan, MBA
Veronica F. Nieva, PhD
Dale Shaller, MPA
Joann Sorra, PhD
Carla Zema, PhD
Deborah J. Carpenter, MSN, has health care expertise in
measuring and managing clinical quality, patient safety processes, medical
event reporting, disseminating research products, program planning, and
managing complex projects. Her experience includes developing patient
experiences of care surveys in end-stage renal disease, a staff survey for
nursing home safety culture, and research in assisted living. Also, she has
worked with the Military Health System to assess patient and provider
perspectives on shared decisionmaking, and to measure performance on quality
indicators. She brings a multidimensional perspective of clinical care,
hospital operations, and vendor experience to Federal agencies,
and nonprofit and corporate clients.
Back
W. Sherman Edwards, MBA, has experience in research related to health care quality
and has designed, conducted, and analyzed studies of the use of health care
services, patient experiences with care, provider experiences within the health
care system, and consumer knowledge of health insurance programs. His research
experience spans Medicare, Medicaid, Tricare, and commercial health care
settings. Mr. Edwards has conducted methodological research on many of the
nation's major health care surveys, including the Medical Expenditure Panel Survey,
the National Health Interview Survey, CAHPS®, and the California Health
Interview Survey.
Back
Vasudha Narayanan, MBA, has experience in research related to heath care
quality and consumer communications. She has designed, conducted, and analyzed
studies on beneficiary/consumer knowledge about health insurance programs and
their use of health insurance information, patient experience with care, and
provider assessments of the health care system. These studies cut across
different settings, such as Medicare, commercial insurance, and Federal
employee programs.
Back
Veronica F. Nieva, PhD, is an organizational psychologist and survey
researcher whose work has focused on understanding,
measuring, and improving human resource and organizational functioning in
various contexts, including the military, private and public sector
organizations, and health care delivery systems. Her recent research focuses on
health care safety culture and quality, with a strong emphasis on dissemination
issues. Dr. Nieva has co-authored two major books and has numerous professional
publications.
Back
Dale Shaller, MPA, has experience in applied health policy analysis
and management consulting, with special emphasis on the design, implementation,
and evaluation of health care quality measurement and improvement programs. He
directs the National CAHPS® Benchmarking Database designed to support benchmarking
and research related to consumer assessments of care. He is also a member of
the Harvard Medical School team working on the CAHPS II research and development
initiative. Mr. Shaller has managed numerous projects aimed at measuring and
improving patient-centered care and has worked with more than 50 public and private health
coalitions to support their value-based purchasing efforts.
Back
Joann Sorra, PhD, is an organizational psychologist with expertise in organizational
research. Dr. Sorra has consulted and conducted research in the areas of
program evaluation, implementation of technological innovations, organizational
climate and culture, and medical error and patient safety. She led the
development of a hospital survey on patient safety culture for the Agency for
Healthcare Research and Quality, and conducted quantitative analyses to assess
its psychometric properties. Hospitals across the United
States and internationally have implemented
this survey, and Dr. Sorra is leading the development of a comparative database
for housing these data. She is also developing a version of the patient safety
culture survey for use with physicians and staff in outpatient medical offices.
Back
Carla Zema, PhD, has spent her career focusing on health care
quality and performance measurement in ambulatory, acute, and community health
care settings, including commercial payors, Medicare, Medicaid, other state
programs, and the Military Health System. She has been involved in the
development, implementation, use, and evaluation of performance measures and
measurement strategies in addition to the development, maintenance, and use of
databases for performance measurement. Dr. Zema also serves on a
number of health care quality and patient safety committees providing expertise
in technical and policy-related issues.
Back