Vice Admiral Raquel Bono, Director of the Defense Health Agency

Vice Admiral Raquel C. Bono is a surgeon and the Director, Defense Health Agency (DHA), Defense Health Headquarters, Falls Church, VA. She has been named by Modern Healthcare among the 50 most influential physicians and 100 most influential individuals in health care in the United States. She led groundbreaking innovations in quality and safety of surgical care at the DHA, which has worldwide impact on surgical training and practice.

She leads a joint, integrated Combat Support Agency enabling the Army, Navy, Air Force, and Marine Corps medical services to provide a medically ready force and ready medical force to Combatant Commands in both peacetime and wartime. The DHA directs the execution of ten joint shared services, among them the health plan (TRICARE) providing worldwide medical, dental and pharmacy programs to more than 9.4 million uniformed service members, retirees and their families.

Commissioned in June 1979, Vice Adm. Raquel Bono obtained her baccalaureate degree from the University of Texas at Austin and attended medical school at Texas Tech University.  She completed a surgical internship and a General Surgery residency at Naval Medical Center Portsmouth, and a Trauma and Critical Care fellowship at the Eastern Virginia Graduate School of Medicine in Norfolk. Shortly after training, Bono saw duty in Operations Desert Shield and Desert Storm as head, Casualty Receiving, Fleet Hospital Five in Saudi Arabia from August 1990 to March 1991.

Additional Speakers Include:

• Leah Binder, President and CEO, The Leapfrog Group
• Matt Austin, PhD, Assistant Professor, Anesthesiology and Critical Care Medicine Faculty, Armstrong Institute for Patient Safety and Quality, Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine
• Missy Danforth, Vice President of Health Care Ratings, The Leapfrog Group
• David Goldhill, Former President and CEO, The Game Show Network (GSN); Board Chair, The Leapfrog Group
• Lisa Ishii, M.D., M.H.S., Assistant Professor, Department of Otolaryngology, Division of Facial Plastic Surgery, John's Hopkins Medicine 
• Robert Krughoff, President, Consumers' Checkbook 
• Adam Stavisky, Senior Vice President of U.S. Benefits at Walmart
• Steve Sternberg, Assistant Managing Editor for Health Initiatives, U.S. News & World Report 
• Katie Stewart, Director, Health Care Ratings, The Leapfrog Group 
• Olivia Ross, Associate Director of Employers Centers of Excellence Network at the Pacific Business Group on Health
• And more