About

Sara Singer is a faculty member in the Department of Medicine, specializing in Primary Care and Population Health at Stanford University. Her research focuses on health research and policy, contributing to the understanding and improvement of healthcare systems and population health. As a professor, she is involved in teaching and mentoring within the Human Biology program, emphasizing interdisciplinary approaches to health and medicine.

Research topics

• Political Science
• Public relations
• Medicine
• Nursing
• Business
• Medical education
• Marketing

Selected publications

• Tips for Success: Developing a Video-Based Multidisciplinary Review Rounds of Critical Events in the Operating Room

  Journal of Patient Safety · 2026-01-21 · 1 citations

  article
  PublisherDOI

• Patient Perspectives of Care Integration During Early Implementation of a Care Coordination Initiative

  Medical Care Research and Review · 2026-01-30

  articleOpen access

  Research shows care coordination contributes to integrated care experiences. Yet evidence from system-level initiatives is lacking. Using a survey of Veterans Health Administration (VHA) patients linked with clinical records, this nonrandomized, cross-sectional study compares perceived care integration among patients at high risk of hospitalization or mortality who did and did not receive care coordination services at 31 VHA sites during early implementation of a national initiative. Six validated dimensions included: knowledge about patient's medical history among staff, providers, and specialists; provider support for self-directed care and for medication adherence and home care; and test results communication. Among 714 respondents, 48% had received care coordination services, 78% were 65 or older, and 95% were male. Regression models suggest little association between receipt of care coordination and perceived care integration. Implementation monitoring followed by responsive adaptations may be needed to boost patient perceptions of care integration.

  PublisherDOI

• ERISA and the Failure of Employers to Perform their Fiduciary Duties: Evidence from a Survey of Health Plan Administrators

  SSRN Electronic Journal · 2025-01-01

  preprintOpen access
  PublisherDOI

• Building Trust in Technology: The Role of Psychological Safety and Team Competency in Surgical Teams

  Academy of Management Proceedings · 2025-07-01

  articleSenior author

  Technology plays a central role in modern team operations, particularly in high-stakes healthcare settings where adaptability, coordination, and precision are critical for success. By improving communication, streamlining workflows, and increasing safety, technological innovations can significantly enhance team performance. However, resistance to these advances, often driven by a lack of trust in technology, disrupts its integration into team processes and, consequently, team performance. Psychological safety climate, which fosters open communication, constructive feedback, and supportive team interactions, may also increase trust in technology, enabling team members to rely on technology effectively and building cohesive human-technology teams. Trust in technology becomes particularly important when teams lack the competency to strengthen human-human interactions. Drawing on data from 69 surgical teams (179 individuals), this study investigates the association between psychological safety climate, trust in technology, and team performance. Our findings reveal that psychological safety climate enhances trust in technology, which in turn improves performance, especially in teams with limited competency as a team. These results underscore the critical role of psychological safety climate in fostering trust in technology and aligning human-technology collaboration. By cultivating psychological safety, leaders can build trust in technology, enabling teams to fully leverage innovations, achieve safer and more efficient workflows, and deliver superior performance.

  PublisherDOI

• Key takeaways from Stanford’s symposium on AI for Data Science

  Journal of Clinical and Translational Science · 2025-01-01

  articleOpen access

  Abstract Numerous symposia and conferences have been held to discuss the promise of Artificial Intelligence (AI). Many center on its potential to transform fields like health and medicine, law, education, business, and more. Further, while many AI-focused events include those data scientists involved in developing foundational models, to our knowledge, there has been little attention on AI’s role for data science and the data scientist. In a new symposium series with its inaugural debut in December 2024 titled AI for Data Science , thought leaders convened to discuss both the promises and challenges of integrating AI into the workflows of data scientists. A keynote address by Michael Pencina from Duke University together with contributions from three panels covered a wide range of topics including rigor, reproducibility, the training of current and future data scientists, and the potential of AI’s integration in public health.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Exploring the Role of Health in Corporate Reporting: A Natural Language Processing (NLP)-Assisted Analysis of Corporate Proxy Statements

  Journal of Business Ethics · 2025-12-05

  article
  PublisherDOI

• Development and preliminary validation of a survey assessing technology innovation readiness in health care settings

  Health Care Management Review · 2025-08-20

  articleSenior author

  BACKGROUND: Innovation readiness is crucial for transformative changes and enhanced performance in health care and depends on multiple factors including trust, training, and unit dynamics. PURPOSES: We develop and validate a survey measuring innovation readiness in health care organizations, focusing on dispositional, situational, and learned dimensions. We identify individual and unit factors that constitute innovation readiness. METHODOLOGY/APPROACH: We administered a survey assessing individual (e.g., autonomy at work) and unit (e.g., unit innovation climate) characteristics to 593 intensive care unit (ICU) clinicians across four ICUs (50.3% response). We used principal component analysis with varimax rotation to assess psychometrics and t tests to examine groups' differences. RESULTS: Psychometric analysis detected seven factors; five multi-item factors, namely, trust in technology, concerns about technology, unit innovation climate, unit manager commitment to technology, and professional identity assessing innovation readiness; four factors with Cronbach's alpha values ranging from 0.79 to 0.90; and two individual single-item factors measuring unit human-technology interdependence and unit training on technology. Individual and unit factors related to technology innovation readiness differed by professional discipline, unit, and tenure. CONCLUSION: The survey exhibited reliability in four ICUs in one hospital, suggesting that this 21-item tool can be used in similar settings. Variation in innovation readiness among professional disciplines and units highlights the importance of tailored approaches when introducing new technologies. PRACTICE IMPLICATIONS: Managers can use this survey to gauge readiness and address individual and unit needs before implementing new technologies. Future research should validate this tool in diverse health care contexts to expand the literature on technology innovation readiness.

  PublisherDOI

• ACUTE FOOD PROTEIN-INDUCED ENTEROCOLITIS SYNDROME IN ADULT PATIENTS WITHOUT IGE FOOD SENSITIZATION

  Annals of Allergy Asthma & Immunology · 2025-11-01

  article
  PublisherDOI

• Building on Advances in Learning Health Systems from the Pandemic: Insights from Organization Theory, Challenges, and Potential Solutions

  Journal of General Internal Medicine · 2025-11-12

  articleOpen access
  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Variation in Hospital Neuraxial Labor Analgesia Rates in California

  Obstetric Anesthesia Digest · 2025-02-18

  article

  ( Anesthesiology . 2024; 140:1098–110. doi:10.1097/ALN.0000000000004961) Neuraxial analgesia (NA) includes epidural, spinal, and combined spinal-epidural analgesia, and is recommended to be available in all maternity hospitals in the United States. There are significant maternal benefits to this effective method of pain reduction during labor and delivery and though this recommendation was instituted by the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists there is little data about the prevalence of NA and about factors that can account for variation in its use or accessibility. This study was designed to assess hospital variation in the prevalence of NA using maternal discharge and vital statistics data in California.

  PublisherDOI

Recent grants

• Engineering Highly Reliable Learning Lab

  NIH · $4.0M · 2015–2021

• NIH Grant R01AI006659

  NIH · $947k · 1990

• Factors Associated with Effective Implementation of a Surgical Safety Checklist

  NIH · $889k · 2010–2014

• Bridge2AI: Salutogenesis Data Generation Project

  NIH · $32.7M · 2022–2026

Frequent coauthors

• David M. Gaba

  Stanford Medicine

  188 shared

• Amy K. Rosen

  VA Boston Healthcare System

  166 shared

• Joel S. Weissman

  Harvard University

  97 shared

• Shibei Zhao

  VA New England Healthcare System

  89 shared

• Anthony P. Ciavarelli

  Human Factors (Norway)

  83 shared

• Michaela Kerrissey

  Harvard University

  81 shared

• Mark W. Friedberg

  Blue Cross Blue Shield of Massachusetts

  80 shared

• Yuchiao Chang

  Massachusetts General Hospital

  77 shared

Education

• Ph.D., Human Biology

  Stanford University

  2005

• B.A., Human Biology

  University of California, Berkeley

  1999