March 15, 2023
In January, NCAFP member Devdutta Sangvai, MD, MBA, became president of Duke Regional Hospital in Durham, NC. He has worked at Duke for over 20 years across a variety of leadership roles, including class instruction, clinical practice, and population health management. He shared that his role as president draws from this previous work: “I’ll continue to build on the work we have been doing to meet the needs of patients and the community,” Dr. Sangvai says. “It’s a unique opportunity to capitalize on that.”
“A career in Family Medicine has really prepared me for this job,” Dr. Sangvai said. “The fact that we take care of patients from before they’re born to their end-of-life care gives you a sense of all the services you will encounter in a hospital.”
But he also named the direct-to-patient realities of the specialty as formative: “Family Medicine also allows you to understand that you need to meet your patients where they’re at. That’s a phenomenon we certainly see in the direct patient care of Family Medicine, and it translates nicely to the administrative space as well.” And he made sure to mention that he’s still seeing patients as a physician, no matter his new responsibilities.
In addition to exposing Dr. Sangvai to the clinical work and patient-first mentality, Family Medicine introduced him to other levels of Duke leadership long before he was president of Duke Regional. His work as a family physician and faculty member connected him to the county board which runs Duke Regional, on which Dr. Sangvai served for six years. “I learned a lot about the hospital by serving on the board,” he said. He explained that his years of work Duke Regional Hospital’s leadership made his transition to interim president (later permanent president) a welcome step.
“There were a number of ways I’d been interacting with the hospital,” Dr. Sangvai says. “Combine that with the deep affinity I have for Durham and the great team at Duke Regional, and the opportunity just made sense.”
He said that the hospital’s plans to improve health access begin with the staff. “We’ve got a great team, and we’ve got a great commitment to our community,” Dr. Sangvai said. “When you put team and community together, it really gives you the chance to work at a place where extraordinary things happen every day.”
He said that the “extraordinary” things to come include expanding health care access, which is one of the main focuses at Duke Regional. “What I’m hoping we’re able to do is continue to find ways to be an anchor in our community and meet the needs of our patients,” he said. “It’s increasingly difficult for patients to access health care services, because of capacity but also affordability. We’re seeing where Duke Regional can help with that, specifically in the work we’re doing around behavioral health. We have a large presence in behavioral health, and so I’m excited to see what we can do to meet this critical need.”
Congratulations to Dr. Sangvai on his new appointment at Duke Regional, and we appreciate the high-quality care he and his teams are providing their patients.
The North Carolina Academy of Family Physicians, Inc. (NCAFP) is a nonprofit professional association headquartered in Raleigh which represents over 4,300 family physicians, family medicine residents, and medical students across the state. It is the largest medical specialty association in North Carolina and is a constituent chapter of the American Academy of Family Physicians, based in Leadwood, KS.
For more information about the NCAFP, please contact NCAFP Communications and Membership Manager Kevin LaTorre at kevin@ncafp.com or (919) 980-5381.