Inside Duke Medicine

Update on Duke’s Maestro Care from Dr. Dzau: A Shared Priority to Advance Duke Medicine

Victor J. Dzau, M.D., chancellor for health affairs and president and CEO of Duke University Health Systems, talks with participants in a Maestro Care training class.

Victor J. Dzau, M.D.
Chancellor for Health Affairs; CEO, DUHS

With the publication of this issue of Inside Duke Medicine, we find ourselves on the verge of the historic first implementation of the Duke Maestro Care electronic health record project that I believe could ultimately represent the single most transformative event in the history of Duke Medicine.

The Wave 1 implementation of Maestro Care across all of the Duke Primary Care practices and Urgent Care facilities, as well as the DOC practice, a family medicine practice and three pediatric practices, will go live on Wednesday, July 18. It will be the first step in the creation of a single electronic health record that meets our goal of having “one patient, one record, one system.”

This is a remarkable achievement given that the work to implement Maestro Care at Duke began in earnest less than one year ago. This is just the first of four waves of implementations across all of our ambulatory clinics that will take place over the next year. Maestro Care will be introduced throughout Duke University Hospital in July of 2013, followed by implementations at Durham Regional Hospital and Duke Raleigh Hospital in 2014.

Our implementation of this stateof-the-art technology comes on the heels of the Supreme Court’s ruling to uphold the Affordable Care Act. Our commitment to this project, and an expedited implementation, a year ago reflected our determination to be optimally prepared for a future in which population health management would be dependent on sophisticated health record technology.

It also reflects our ongoing commitment to providing the highest quality and evidence-based healthcare services to our patients.

I have personally witnessed the preparation that many people across the organization are engaged in to make this project a success. I am profoundly grateful and humbled by the commitment of providers, faculty and staff in this regard.

Please take a moment to read more about this project in this issue of Inside. This is truly a project that reflects our core value of “Caring for our patients, their loved ones, and each other.”