Saul Weiner is a board certified internist and pediatrician with practice, leadership, and research experience in a variety of health care settings. He has served as a residency program director, academic division head, clinic director, and health services investigator. Dr. Weiner is a former Generalist Physician Faculty Scholar of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. He has served as a principal or co-investigator of studies of health systems improvement, health surveys, medical decision making and provider communication funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, the National Institutes of Health, the National Science Foundation, and the Veterans Administration. Over the last 5 years he has focused on developing and refining methods that employ incognito standardized patients to collect performance and quality of care data in a broad range of health care settings.

Alan Schwartz, PhD
Founder and Principal

Alan Schwartz is a cognitive psychologist with expertise in medical decision making, organizational behavior, and measurement with over a decade of experience evaluating and training health care providers to improve quality. His research in medical decision making and evidence-based medicine has been funded by the National Science Foundation, the National Library of Medicine, the National Board of Medical Examiners, and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. He serves on the editorial board of the journal Medical Decision Making. His most recent book, published by Cambridge University Press, is Medical Decision Making: A Physician’s Guide.

Amy Binns-Calvey
Standardized Patient Coordinator

Amy Binns-Calvey oversees all aspects of the training and oversight of our actors in the field. To date she has overseen over 300 (and counting) unannounced visits in the field to dozens of physicians and practices throughout Chicago and Milwaukee. She extensively trains and supervises standardized patients in the educational, testing and research arenas. Amy brings 30 years of professional theater experience (including directing an off-Broadway production) to her with standardized patients. She has been an instructor and program designer for The Art Institute of Chicago’s Young Artists Studios and an Illinois Arts Roster artist in residence. Her proficiency with improvisational techniques uniquely qualifies her for training SPs to remain undetected during unannounced encounters. Amy has first-hand experience as an unannounced SP, working undercover.

Gunjan Sharma
Project Manager

Gunjan Sharma oversees and coordinates projects, working closely with our clients to assure seamless communication. She has extensive experience setting up unannounced standardized patient visits in numerous health settings ranging from small group practices to large hospital clinics and clinic networks. She has served as a the project director of a large federally funded studying involving nearly 400 unannounced standardized visits to over 100 physicians and practices throughout the Midwest. Previously, she served as a research associate conducting studies on safety across high consequence industries, including aviation, with an emphasis on safety culture in high reliability organizations.

Gunjan has a Ph.D in Business Commerce and Industrial Psychology from the University of Jammu, India.