The Doctors Company is proud to feature our veteran Patient Safety and Risk Management leaders and expert Patient Safety Risk Managers. The critical work performed by this team cannot be understated: They help you reduce risk, prevent patient injuries, and even save lives.
Why We’re Different
Our Patient Safety and Risk Management team utilizes a data-driven and collaborative strategy to partner with you to identify potential sources of patient injury, increase quality of care, and enhance safety within the practice environment.
Our team is known throughout the industry for helping our members promote patient safety, mitigate risk, and improve outcomes, and there is no other carrier that can even come close to the level of tools, services, and resources we offer you. We have a full-time, regionalized in-house staff of more than 25 patient safety / risk management professionals to support all 50 states and the District of Columbia, whereas most other carriers have limited patient safety and risk management support staff—or fully contract their services through a third-party company.
Every one of our Patient Safety Risk Managers has at least 10 years’ of experience and they all hold the Certified Professional in Healthcare Risk Management (CPHRM) designation.
One distinguishing feature of The Doctors Company is our Patient Safety Centers of Excellence, which gives your assigned Patient Safety Risk Manager access to expertise in more than 20 major specialties. This service provides you with support from a specialist who focuses on specific risk characteristics of each specialty to help enhance your risk mitigation efforts.
In our 2025 Member Experience Survey, 90 percent of our members agreed we go above and beyond to help them prevent claims. The industry’s largest claims database gives us an unparalleled understanding of lawsuits against clinicians, and our data-driven approach enables us to anticipate emerging trends and deliver innovative patient safety tools to help our members reduce risk.
But before we delve deeper into the exceptional services, guidance, and resources our Patient Safety and Risk Management team can provide, we’d like to introduce the extraordinary professionals who lead the team to achieving success with you.
Patient Safety and Risk Management Leadership
Julie Ritzman, MBA, CPHRM, is National Senior Vice President of Patient Safety and Risk Management and operates out of The Doctors Company’s office in Sherman Oaks, California. Before taking on the National Senior Vice President role, Ms. Ritzman was the Vice President of Patient Safety and Risk Management for Region I. Ms. Ritzman’s background includes experience as Vice President of Risk Management Services at the Mutual Insurance Company of Arizona (MICA) from 2014 to 2019. Prior to that, she worked for 15 years as a Risk Manager within large health systems such as Dignity and Sanford Health. Ms. Ritzman has served on the Medical Professional Liability Association Risk Management Committee for several years and is currently Section Chair.
Ms. Ritzman holds a master’s degree in business administration from the University of South Dakota and is a Certified Professional in Healthcare Risk Management.
Jeff Brady, MD, MPH, is the Vice President of Patient Safety and Risk Management for The Doctors Company, and is based in Maryland, near Washington, D.C. He is responsible for leading and advancing the company’s patient safety and risk management initiatives through strategic business development, exceptional member service, and operational excellence.
Dr. Brady is an experienced leader in patient safety improvement and healthcare quality. For more than 20 years, his professional focus has been on bringing together people and organizations with different perspectives to collaborate, drive, and support innovation that will advance health. He has served in leadership roles in the private sector and federal government, including with the Agency for Healthcare Research & Quality (AHRQ), the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), U.S. Public Health Service, U.S. Navy, and Highmark Health. Dr. Brady actively contributes to the field as a member of advisory committees and boards convened by the Institute for Healthcare Improvement, the Partnership for Quality Measurement (for the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services), the Leapfrog Group, and others. He served as a commissioned officer in both the Navy and Public Health Service, retiring from active duty in 2019 at the rank of Rear Admiral / Assistant Surgeon General.
Dr. Brady attended the Medical College of Georgia; completed internship training in internal medicine at the Naval Medical Center in San Diego, California; and earned a master’s degree in public health from the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences (USUHS) in Bethesda, Maryland. He completed the Navy’s General Preventive Medicine Residency, also at USUHS, and is board certified in Public Health and General Preventive Medicine.
Karen B. Everitt, JD, is the Vice President of Patient Safety and Risk Management for The Doctors Company’s office in Sherman Oaks, California. With 30 years of experience in medical professional liability insurance and law, Ms. Everitt now leads a team dedicated to upholding The Doctors Company’s mission to advance, protect, and reward the practice of good medicine and delivering expert risk management assessments and guidance, practical resources, and meaningful mitigation and defense-related insights.
Prior to joining The Doctors Company, Ms. Everitt was Vice President of the Risk Team at Mutual Insurance Company of Arizona, where she established an interdisciplinary team to address insureds’ liability risk and operational challenges and collaborated with the senior leadership team to develop and implement a strategic plan. She has also served as Vice President of Risk Resource, Education, and Quality Improvement for ProAssurance, where she worked for 23 years.
Ms. Everitt completed a bachelor of science degree in nursing magna cum laude from Auburn University and earned a juris doctor degree from the University of Alabama.
Robin Wessels, MBA, BSN, RN, CPHRM, is the Vice President of Patient Safety and Risk Management for The Doctors Company’s office in Jacksonville, Florida. Ms. Wessels has over 30 years of healthcare experience and a wealth of broad-based patient safety and risk management knowledge. She has held various prior positions including Director of Emergency Services at Howard County General Hospital and member of Johns Hopkins Medicine, where she was responsible for daily operations, identifying process improvement, and risk reduction opportunities in a high-volume emergency department.
In addition, Ms. Wessels held the position of Director of Corporate Risk Management at MedStar Health, Inc., where she was responsible for the analysis of risk management and claims data, strategic planning, and coordination of loss control activities for the Department of Risk Management.
Ms. Wessels earned her bachelor’s degree in nursing from Molloy College in Rockville Centre, New York, and her master’s degree in business administration from The George Washington University in Washington D.C. She is a Certified Professional in Healthcare Risk Management and a member of the American Society for Healthcare Risk Management and the Florida Society for Healthcare Risk Management.
Robert Morton, MAS, CPPS, CPHRM, ARM, is the Assistant Vice President of Patient Safety and Risk Management for The Doctors Company’s office in Austin, Texas. He is a patient safety and healthcare risk management professional with more than 30 years of experience in the medical professional liability industry, serving healthcare practitioners and organizations.
As a student of the patient safety movement, Mr. Morton earned a master of applied science degree in patient safety and healthcare quality from Johns Hopkins University. He is a Certified Professional in Patient Safety (CPPS) from the Certification Board for Professionals in Patient Safety and a Certified Professional in Healthcare Risk Management from the American Hospital Association/American Society for Healthcare Risk Management. Mr. Morton has earned an Associate in Risk Management (ARM) designation from the Insurance Institute of America. He is a member of the American Society for Healthcare Risk Management and the South Texas Society for Healthcare Risk Management. Mr. Morton is a former board member of the South Texas Society for Healthcare Risk Management.
His interests and expertise include leadership, change management, continuous improvement, clinician burnout and well-being, diagnostic safety, high reliability, and artificial intelligence (AI).
Unrivaled Patient Safety and Risk Management Services and Resources
When you become a member of The Doctors Company, you immediately have access to an abundance of services and resources intended to help you protect your practice by mitigating risk and improving patient care. Whether your practice has 1 or 1,000 practitioners, we can help you uncover hidden liability risks that can lead to costly claims.
Our robust offerings that you can benefit from include:
Online Clinical Tools and Programs
- Articles—Our comprehensive library of insightful original articles covers specialty-specific and practice topics across the spectrum of care.
- Informed Consent Resources—Customizable sample forms for informed content and informed refusal are available to help your clients manage and document patient expectations.
- Closed Claims Insights—Unique, data-driven analyses derived from the industry’s largest claims database can help your clients minimize potential liability through understanding the lessons learned from our closed claims studies.
- Advanced Practice Clinician (APC) Guidance—Focusing on the needs of APCs who practice independently or as part of a multidisciplinary team, our exclusive guide for APCs explains preventive actions and loss reduction measures to help them confidently navigate the ever-changing practice environment. We also have a dedicated resource page that details the intricacies of liability protection.
- Dentistry Resources—Case studies and strategies, articles and videos, and educational opportunities are all conveniently located on our Dentistry Resources page.
- Practice Manager Resources—Guidance is given on important risk-reducing practice management topics such as patient relations and challenging interactions, informed consent, EHRs and diagnostic study, laboratory testing and consultation tracking, appointment management, and HIPAA on our Resources for Practice Managers page.
Exclusive Member Services
- INSIGHT Services—You can partner with us to complete a thorough risk assessment and create a customized action plan for your practice. Our INSIGHT tools use data analysis to help identify risks and improve quality of care.
- Risk Management Fundamentals—Practice managers can take Risk Management Fundamentals for the Practice Manager, our complimentary on-demand program exclusively for member practices. The 16 lessons, which can be taken in any order, focus on identifying and reducing office-based practice risks.
- Guided Risk Self-Assessment—Our five compact virtual modules equip you with skills to recognize office practice vulnerabilities and proactively reduce risk. Upon completion of the guided risk self-assessment, we can collaborate with them on a custom improvement plan.
- Dental Risk Self-Assessment—This easy-to-navigate dental risk self-assessment will guide you through common pitfalls in dental practices and provide them with risk management resources and strategies to prevent adverse outcomes and patient harm.
Accredited Education Courses
We are proud to be the professional liability insurance industry leader in providing accredited live, virtual, and on-demand continuing education for physicians, dentists, APCs, and practice managers.
Our cloud-based education platform has a user-friendly interface and over 150 on-demand courses.
The Doctors Company has been awarded the prestigious Accreditation with Commendation by ACCME, an honor that recognizes the achievements of continuing medical education (CME) providers. We are also an ADA CERP Recognized Provider of dental education and an ANCC accredited provider of continuing nursing education activities.
Timely News on Trending Patient Safety Topics
- The Doctor’s Advocate—Published quarterly, each issue of The Doctor’s Advocate includes new information about topics like medical malpractice liability, risk mitigation, and advocacy activities.
- The Doctor’s Practice—You can subscribe to our monthly e-newsletter featuring articles, videos, and guides.
- The Practitioner—Designed for APCs, this e-newsletter provides expert insights on issues and risks encountered by nurse practitioners, physician assistants, certified registered nurse assistants, certified nurse-midwives, and certified midwives.
- The Dentist’s Advocate—Designed for dentists, this e-newsletter provides expert insights on the risks dental professionals face and strategies to reduce those risks.
What Can You Do to Help Mitigate Risk?
Be proactive—contact our Patient Safety and Risk Management team for a consultation.
Whether you’re applying for coverage with The Doctors Company or considering renewal, we are available to help address your patient safety and risk management needs. We have dedicated staff assigned to territories ready to respond and help.
Call (800) 421-2368 and follow the prompts to reach your assigned Patient Safety Risk Manager or to receive an emergency consultation through our 24-hour hotline.
We are here to give you critical options for minimizing risk and protecting your practice. Give us a call today to discuss and schedule a consultation.
