Processing Information

In the weeding process duplicates of reprints and speeches were discarded. Bills, receipts, and personal financial information documents were shredded. Several documents were moved to Medical Center records. Most of the speeches, talks, chapter articles, and reprints were organized by date into bulky notebooks. The order was retained but the notebooks were discarded. The resultant collections size was thereby reduced to approximately two-thirds of the orginal in terms of linear feet.

Biographical / Historical

Don Eugene Detmer was born in Kansas in 1939. He studied at the University of Kansas and the University of Durham in Durham, England before earning his MD degree in June 1965 from the University of Kansas. He also received a Master of Arts from the University of Cambridge in 2002. His postgraduate medical training was done in the Departments of Medicine at Johns Hopkins Hospital and Duke University Medical Center from 1965-1967. He spent a year from 1972-1973 at the Institute of Medicine, National Academies in Washington DC. His military service was as a Clinical Associate, Surgery Branch at the National Heart Institute, at the NIH from 1967-1969 and as a Surgeon with the U.S. Public Health Service from 1972-1973.

In 1973 he took a job as Assistant Professor in the Department of Preventive Medicine, Department of Surgery at the University of Wisconsin and rose to a full Professor. He left Wisconsin in 1984 to be a Professor in the Department of Surgery, Department of Medical Informatics at the University of Utah in Salt Lake City where he also served as Vice President for Health Sciences. In 1988 he came to the University of Virginia where he was the Vice President for Health Sciences, a Professor in the Department of Surgery, and a Professor of Business Administration at the Darden School. From 1992-1999 to Dr. Detmer was Co-director of the Virginia Health Policy Center. From 1993-1996 he was Vice-President and Provost for Health Sciences at UVA as well as a University Professor of Health Policy and Professor of Surgery. From 1996-1998 he was the Senior Vice President at UVA. From 1996-1999 he was a Professor in Health Policy, Health Sciences Policy, Surgery, and Health Evaluation Sciences. From 1999-2004 he served at the University of Cambridge.

His professional activities were numerous including roles with the American Medical Informatics Association, China Medical Board of New York, Friends of the National Library of Medicine, Institute of Medicine, the American Association of Medical Colleges, and the Nuffield Trust. His professional affiliations, memberships, honors and awards were many. He served on editorial boards, advisory groups in the US and the UK, on government boards and committees, and as a consultant to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, the U.S. Congress, to the states of New York, Virginia and Wisconsin, and to various universities and foundations. He was a frequent visiting lecturer, both national and internationally. His bibliography has nearly 200 entries and includes articles related to surgery, health policy, physician assistants, computer-based patient records, physician workforce, medical informatics, quality of health care, and the academic health center.

He was married to Mary Helen McFerson (1939-2018) and has two daughters.

Scope and Contents

The Don E. Detmer papers contain speeches, reprints, policy documents, committee meeting records, articles, correspondence, and editorials that relate to the professional life of Don E. Detmer. Materials particularly document Detmer's work during the 1990s and 2000s. There are Institute of Medicine materials and UVA Health System policy documents.

Related Material

See also: Office of the Vice President for Health Affairs records, RG-17-5