Julia C. Prentice, PhD

Biography

Dr. Prentice is Research Director at the Betsy Lehman Center for Patient Safety and holds faculty appointments in the Chobanian School of Medicine. Her projects focus on measuring the prevalence of adverse events, understanding the long-term impacts of medical error and the health system response, and evaluating the effectiveness of key quality improvement initiatives, especially in maternal health. Her team found that pregnant individuals who delivered at hospitals that over-assessed their resources to deliver higher risk patients were more likely to experience a severe maternal morbidity. This finding was the key data point that helped Massachusetts become one of the few states to regulate levels of maternal care, ensuring the public knows what resources are available at hospitals. To decrease racial disparities, she also brought hospital and state agency stakeholders together to allow quicker access to severe maternal morbidity (SMM) rates stratified by race/ethnicity, insurance status and socioeconomic factors.

Previous work in the Department of Veterans Affaires focused on the comparative effectiveness of medications and the validation of access and diabetes quality metrics using patient-level outcomes. This work utilized econometric methods to supplement randomized trial evidence with data analyses based on quasi-experimental designs. These results have allowed her to identify health risks of medication regimes not identified by other approaches. Her research on access to care in veteran populations has helped to shape national Department of Veterans Affairs policies for collecting and evaluating appointment wait times in responses to recent VA access crises.