Rockville Institute Affiliates in
Community Health & Health Care

Deborah J. Carpenter, MSN
W. Sherman Edwards, MBA
Veronica F. Nieva, PhD
Joann Sorra, 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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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