Planetree HCAHPS Consultants

Carrie Brady is Planetree’s Vice President of Quality and is responsible for assisting Planetree affiliates in collaborating on patient-centered quality and patient safety strategies and for coordinating the development and implementation of Planetree’s patient-centered designation process.  Before joining Planetree, Carrie spent several years as a Vice President of the Connecticut Hospital Association, where her role included coordinating two statewide pilot-tests of the HCAHPS patient experience of care survey, developing one of the first patient safety organizations (PSOs) in the nation, and designing a public reporting program for Connecticut hospitals.  Carrie has served on several state and national committees, including the National Quality Forum (NQF) Review Committee for Hospital CAHPS, the NQF Serious Reportable Events Maintenance Committee, and the National CAHPS Benchmarking Database Advisory Group.  Carrie received a J.D. and combined M.A/B.A in Sociology from Northwestern University, and was a 2005-2006 Patient Safety Leadership Fellow. 

Charles Darby has extensive survey research experience in the fields of education and health care. He has designed, conducted and implemented surveys while in the private sector for several institutes at the National Institutes of Health, the National Science Foundation, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and the National Center for Health Statistics. He was at the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) until recently. He led AHRQ's involvement in the CAHPS instrument development effort including the development of the CAHPS Hospital Survey and CAHPS Clinician & Group Survey. In addition to participating in the development of the CAHPS surveys, he led the efforts to get the surveys adopted and used broadly. He led the work of the agency in providing technical assistance to users of CAHPS surveys. He is now consulting on CAHPS and CAHPS-related projects.

Sheryl Horowitz, PhD is the Director of Research and Evaluation at Planetree and works with affiliates to develop evidence based tools to assess patient-centered care initiatives. She is also working on coordinating multi-site research studies to validate the Planetree model of care. Prior to coming to Planetree, she served as senior scientist/analyst at a large urban hospital where she contributed to setting the research agenda, and collaborated with clinical and academic researchers on studies ranging from pharmaceutical and device clinical trials to disease management outcome studies.  She graduated with a PhD in Biological Anthropology from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst; has received Post-doctoral training in Demography from University of California, Berkeley and was awarded two Post-doctoral fellowships from Stanford University in evolutionary ecology and economic history.