Board of Directors

Mark L Graber, MD, FACP is the leading authority internationally on diagnostic error and how to address it. He is the founder of the annual Diagnostic Error in Medicine conference series, the journal, DIAGNOSIS, and is the founder of both The Society to Improve Diagnosis in Medicine (SIDM) and now The Community Improving Diagnosis in Medicine (CIDM).

In 2014 he received the John M Eisenberg Award from The Joint Commission and the National Quality Forum, the nation’s top honor in patient safety and quality for originating Patient Safety Awareness Week, and establishing the new field of diagnostic safety

Edward Hoffer MD, FACP, FACC, FACMI has combined clinical practice of non-invasive cardiology and Internal Medicine with cutting-edge research in medical informatics. He has worked for several decades at the Mass General Hospital's Lab of Computer Science on DXplain, a computerized diagnostic decision support system designed to broaden the clinician's differential diagnosis list. He has lectured on medical errors and using AI in medicine.  He served six years on the SIDM Board.

CIDM board member Helen Haskell is president of the patient organizations Mothers Against Medical Error and Consumers Advancing Patient Safety and head of patient safety at the World Patients’ Alliance. She is a co-investigator of the AHRQ Patient-Partnered Diagnostic Center of Excellence and an advisory board member for the Coordinating Center for Diagnostic Excellence (CoDEx) at the University of California at San Francisco and the Diagnostic Excellence initiative at the US National Quality Forum. Helen is an Institute for Healthcare Improvement senior fellow, a member of the ISQua International Academy of Quality and Safety in Health Care (IAQS), and a board member of the Patient Safety Action Network and the International Society for Rapid Response Systems. She is a previous chair of the WHO Patients for Patient Safety Advisory Group and the Patient Engagement Committee of the Society to Improve Diagnosis in Medicine. 

Helen’s goal since the medical error death of her young son Lewis has been to enhance the patient contribution to safety and quality in healthcare. She has written or co-authored dozens of articles, book chapters, and educational materials on patient engagement in safety, quality, and diagnosis, including a co-edited textbook of case studies from the patient perspective. Her son Lewis’s story has been featured in educational programs and videos including Transparent Health’s full-length Lewis Blackman Story. Helen holds a bachelor's degree in Classical Studies from Duke University and a master’s degree in Anthropology from Rice University in the United States.

Dr David Meyers is an emergency physician and physician executive. He received his MD degree from Temple University in Philadelphia and trained in internal medicine at Cook County Hospital in Chicago, IL. Board certified in both internal medicine and emergency medicine, over his 40+ year career he served as Chief of Emergency Medicine at numerous hospitals from small, rural and critical-access facilities to major urban trauma centers, including Sinai Hospital of Baltimore, where he has been a member of the medical staff since 1994. He also served as Chief of the Medical Practice Division of EmCare, Inc, a national physician practice management organization, where his responsibilities included oversight of quality of care, professional liability risk and claims management and EHR implementation for 7,000+ clinicians at several hundred hospitals. His current activities focus on patient safety, harm reduction and the patient experience, the quality of health care, institutional and clinical ethics consultations and pre-clinical education.

Ruth Ryan BSN, MSW, is a retired registered nurse and current medical writer. She was a risk manager at LAMMICO, a medical mutual professional liability company, for more than 10 years. At LAMMICO she built a continuing medical education program which was the foundation of Medical Interactive, an online CME/CNE company with contracts across many states and hospital systems. This program focused on risk management and in particular improving diagnosis—in recognition of the fact that diagnostic error is the single most common, costly and catastrophic cause of medical liability claims. In 2009 Ruth joined what became the Society For Improving Diagnosis in Medicine with the aim of bringing the lessons learned from claims databases to SIDM.  When SIDM ceased operations in 2024, Ruth was instrumental in helping to found the Community Improving Diagnosis (CIDM) to continue the mission and vision of a world where no one is harmed by misdiagnosis.

Dana Siegal is the Vice President of Risk Management and Analytics at Coverys. Prior to Coverys, she served as Director of Patient Safety Services for CRICO Candello. She is a nationally recognized expert in data-driven risk management and a well-known speaker on medical error and patient safety culture with a specific focus on the diagnostic error and the diagnostic process of care.

Following 15 years as a clinician in Emergency Medicine, Dana has been involved in the quality and risk management aspects of healthcare for over 30 years including clinical and financial risk management for large healthcare organizations and physician practice groups. Dana also has many years of frontline experience in hospital Risk Management and Peer Review.

Dana is an RN, a Certified Professional in Healthcare Risk Management (CPHRM), and a Certified Professional in Patient Safety (CPPS).   Throughout her career, she  has authored numerous articles and publications and has served on the Board of Directors for the Society for Improvement in Diagnostic Medicine (SIDM), Peer Review Board for  the American Society for Health Care Risk Management (ASHRM) Journal. She currently serves on the Board of Directors for the MA Coalition for Prevention of Medial Error, the IHI Diagnostic Excellence Advisory Group, the SIDM Practice Improvement Committee, and is a member of the Hospital Insurance Forum (HIF) annual faculty and planning committee.