Behind the Coverage: Meet Our Patient Safety and Risk Management Team Leaders

Throughout 2025, in each issue of The Agent’s Advocate, we are giving you an inside view of the experience and capabilities of the teams that work tirelessly behind the scenes to provide your clients with superior coverage and services.

In this latest installment of Behind the Coverage, we are 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 your clients reduce risk, prevent patient injuries, and even save lives.

Why We’re Different From Our Competitors

Our Patient Safety and Risk Management team utilizes a data-driven and collaborative strategy to partner with your clients 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 your clients. 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 client’s assigned Patient Safety Risk Manager access to expertise in more than 20 major specialties. This service provides your client with support from a specialist who focuses on specific risk characteristics of each specialty to help enhance your client’s risk mitigation efforts.

And don’t just take our word for it: Our members echo our points here. Last year, in our 2024 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 your clients.

Patient Safety and Risk Management Leadership

Julie Ritzman, MBA, CPHRM, has recently assumed the role of 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, Julie was the Vice President of Patient Safety and Risk Management for Region I. Julie’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. Julie has served on the Medical Professional Liability Association Risk Management Committee for several years and is currently Section Chair.

Julie holds a master’s degree in business administration from the University of South Dakota and is a Certified Professional in Healthcare Risk Management.

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. Robin 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, Robin 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.

Robin 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, Robert 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. Robert 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. Robert 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 your client becomes a member of The Doctors Company, they immediately have access to an abundance of services and resources intended to help them protect their practice by mitigating risk and improving patient care. Whether their practice has 1 or 1,000 practitioners, we can help them uncover hidden liability risks that can lead to costly claims.

Our robust offerings that your clients 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—Your clients can partner with us to complete a thorough risk assessment and create a customized action plan for their 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 your clients 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 your clients 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.

In 2025, we rolled out an improved, cloud-based education platform with a more user-friendly interface and over 150 on-demand courses in our library.

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—Your clients 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.

What Can You Do to Help Your Clients Mitigate Risk?

Be proactive—contact our Patient Safety and Risk Management team for a consultation.

Whether you’re placing new business with The Doctors Company or having discussions with your clients at renewal, we are available to help address the patient safety and risk management needs of your clients. We have dedicated staff assigned to territories ready to respond and help.

Here are ways to get in touch with us:

• Call (800) 421-2368 and follow the prompts to reach your client’s assigned Patient Safety Risk Manager or to receive an emergency consultation through our 24-hour hotline.
• Explore our new web-based interactive map that includes essential market and departmental resources / contact information on a state-by-state basis.

We are your trusted partner to help you strengthen your client relationships and give your clients critical options for minimizing risk and protecting their practice. They will appreciate you looking out for them, just as we appreciate you giving us the opportunity to provide the best imaginable service to our valued members. Give us a call today to discuss and schedule a consultation.