Briar Ertz-berger MD, MPH

Dr. Briar Ertz-Berger is a Northwest Permanente Assistant Director of Special Populations and an emergency room physician, she had the opportunity to consider quality of care from a population perspective, focusing on a subset of Kaiser Permanente's most vulnerable members. Health inequities and the effects of unmitigated socio-economic struggles were very apparent to Dr. Ertz-Berger as a medical student working in the Bronx and drove her initial interest in public health research.
During her residency at OHSU, she looked at the impact of Oregon Health Plan cutbacks on Emergency Department utilization in an effort to highlight the detrimental impact of health system change on the Medicaid population. In her current role, Dr. Ertz-Berger works closely with partners within Care Delivery Strategy at KPNW, leading care management efforts to improve population health. One of the main focuses of her work is to address the social, economic, and behavioral needs in order to improve their members’ lives and health outcomes.