In honor of Ian Buchanan, MD
Ian Buchanan first came to UNC as a medical student in 1999 and then stayed here to get a master’s degree in public health. His focus was health care administration and health care quality. He decided that this would be his life’s work, partly inspired by his wife’s experience.
“She had melanoma nine years ago and now she’s doing great,” Dr. Buchanan says. “But she had some really awful experiences, as well as some really incredible experiences, that were indelible.”
When a position opened with UNC’s oncology service line, Dr. Buchanan had been working at United Healthcare for 18 months and planned on staying there for five years.
“But this opportunity to run a portion of this beautiful new hospital was too good to pass up,” he says.
“My job is to make sure that when a patient comes to UNC they walk away knowing that not only did they get top quality care but that they walk away feeling as if they were our only patient, as if they were a member of our family and that they were truly cared for and cared about.”