Please join us in expressing our sincere gratitude to Raquel Bartz, MD, MMCi, for her 20 years of dedication, service and leadership to Duke and extending her our best wishes in her new position as associate chair of critical care medicine in the Department of Anesthesia at Brigham and Women's Hospital. Dr. Bartz’s last day at Duke will be Tuesday, August 31, at which time Vijay Krishnamoorthy, MD, MPH, PhD, will begin leading the Critical Care Medicine (CCM) Division as interim chief.
"Duke and especially the Department of Anesthesiology has given me incredible opportunities for which I am thankful for. However, it will be my teammates and colleagues that I work with on a daily basis that I will miss the most. Duke is full of really amazing people that I have learned from and built long-standing friendships with," says Dr. Bartz, associate professor of anesthesiology and associate professor in medicine. "Because of the talented faculty in the division, I am confident that it will continue to flourish without me."
Dr. Bartz received her medical degree from the University of Washington School of Medicine in Seattle in 1998. She went on to the University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinics for an internship in internal medicine and completed her residency at the University of Wisconsin Hospitals and Clinics. She arrived at Duke in 2001, where she completed both her pulmonary/critical care fellowship and the anesthesia residency. Dr. Bartz joined the faculty after her anesthesia residency in 2008. Her research interests have since focused on understanding severe critical illness and how to support and reverse organ dysfunction.
An internationally prominent physician-scientist with unique training in anesthesiology, pulmonology and critical care medicine, Dr. Bartz was notably named chief of the Critical Care Medicine Division in September of 2015, formally launching this division within our department. In 2016, she was also appointed co-director of the Surgical Intensive Care Unit at Duke University Hospital. Under Dr. Bartz's leadership and successful recruitment of renowned CCM Division faculty, she has integrated the delivery of care across multiple anesthesia divisions, providing world-class care to critically ill patients at six intensive care units (with 150 beds) across three hospitals in the Duke University Health System and the Durham Veterans Affairs Medical Center. These units are directed or co-directed by faculty from the CCM Division. Over the past six years, the CCM Division has flourished and now represents the largest division in our department. During that time, Dr. Bartz has grown prominent research programs in population health, clinical trials, translational research, and basic science within the division, with funding from federal, foundation and industry sources. Additionally, she helped the division grow programs in data-driven clinical care, quality and safety, and learning health, in collaboration with the health system. In 2012, Dr. Bartz expanded her expertise by earning a master of management in clinical informatics (MMCi) at the Fuqua School of Business in Durham. Thanks to her strategic guidance and multidisciplinary approach, the CCM Division has achieved national and international prominence as leaders in critical care, cutting-edge research and innovative education programs.
Throughout her innovative career at Duke, Dr. Bartz played an instrumental role in the establishment of the department's Critical Care and Perioperative Population Health Research (CAPER) Unit, which launched in 2019; it aims to improve the lives of patients undergoing surgery and critical care on a global scale through the conduct of large-scale observational research using rigorous population health methods. The CAPER Unit recently reached a milestone of more than $1 million in industry support, as well as numerous high-impact publications in perioperative and critical care medicine. Among her special recognitions, she is especially proud of being a part of the LATIN-19 team, which earned a Duke Presidential Award for their COVID-19 response to support equity in our Hispanic patient population during the pandemic, aiming to reduce the infection rate among Durham's Latinx community.
Dr. Krishnamoorthy, an associate professor of anesthesiology and in population health sciences, brings nearly 15 years of experience to his new role as interim division chief. He earned his medical degree at the University of Illinois College of Medicine, where he also completed an anesthesiology residency and a critical care medicine and pain medicine fellowship. He went on to the University of Washington to complete an NIH T32 fellowship, earn an MPH and PhD in epidemiology, and serve on the faculty as an anesthesiologist and intensivist at Harborview Medical Center. In 2017, he joined the Duke Anesthesiology faculty and has since been an integral part of the growth of our Critical Care Medicine Division. His current leadership roles at Duke Anesthesiology include associate division chief of the CCM Division, as well as co-director of the CAPER Unit.
On behalf of our department, please join us in thanking Dr. Bartz for her exceptional service as division chief and wishing her the best in the next phase of her career, and congratulating Dr. Krishnamoorthy on his new leadership role in our department.