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 UVA Medical Center records. Most of the correspondence, 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.

This process was repeated in 2024 when the collection was reprocessed to include new accessioned materials and previous additions to the collection that were donated during the COVID-19 pandemic.

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 in June 1965 from the University of Kansas. He also received an MA from the University of Cambridge in 2002. His postgraduate medical training was done 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 National Institutes of Health from 1967-1969 and as a surgeon with the U.S. Public Health Service from 1972-1973.

Dr. Detmer served a joint appointment in preventative medicine and surgery at the University of Wisconsin-Madison where he was assistant professor (1973-1977), associate professor (1977-1980), and professor (1980-1984). In 1984, he joined the University of Utah, serving as Vice President for Health Sciences and professor of surgery and medical informatics until 1988. Dr. Detmer was instrumental in developing, along with Dr. Homer Warner, the University of Utah's Health Evaluation through Logical Processing (HELP) Hospital Information System.

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, Dr. Detmer was co-director of the Virginia Health Policy Center. From 1993-1996, he was Vice-President and Provost for Health Sciences at the University, as well as a professor of health policy and a professor of surgery. From 1996-1998, he was the Senior Vice President at the University, also lecturing as a professor in health policy, health sciences policy, surgery, and health evaluation sciences until 1999.

From 1999-2004, Dr. Detmer was the Dennis Gillings Professor of Health Management at Cambridge University and is a lifetime member of Clare Hall College, Cambridge. From 2005-2015, he was a visiting professor at the Centre for Health Informatics and Multi-professional Education, University College London.

Dr. Detmer's professional activities include working 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 is 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 Eugene Detmer papers contain speeches, reprints, policy documents, committee meeting records, articles, correspondence, editorials, and born-digital materials that relate to the professional life of Don Eugene Detmer. Materials particularly document Dr. Detmer's work during 1973-2004 working at the Department of Surgery at the University of Wisconsin, the Department of Surgery and the Department of Medical Informatics at the University of Utah, the University of Virginia, and the University of Cambridge. Other materials relate to the Institute of Medicine, the UVA Health System, the American Medical Informatics Association, the China Medical Board of New York, the Friends of the National Library of Medicine, the American Association of Medical Colleges, and the Nuffield Trust.

Related Material

See also: Office of the Vice President for Health Affairs records, RG-17-5; University of Virginia School of Medicine records (RG-17-1); and the Mary Helen Detmer journal (MSS 16372) found in UVA's Albert and Shirley Small Special Collections Library.

Subjects and Indexing Terms

• University of Utah
• University of Virginia
• University of Virginia--Health System
• University of Wisconsin-Madison