Reid Barton Adams, MD
Gastrointestinal Surgical Oncology
Bio & Overview
As chief medical officer (CMO), Reid Adams, MD, serves as UVA Health’s senior physician. In this role, he oversees the medical staff and works to ensure high-quality patient care and service. In addition, he oversees the Medical Center’s service lines of cardiology, neurosciences, oncology, and transplant services.
In April 2020 during the start of the COVID pandemic, Dr. Adams took on the role of interim CMO for the Medical Center, while continuing to serve in his role as the endowed S. Hurts Watts Chair of the Department of Surgery for the School of Medicine. In 2022, he stepped down as the chair and continued in his role as CMO.
Dr. Adams has been a part of the UVA community since 1979 when he was an undergraduate student. He attended the UVA School of Medicine as a student and surgery resident. After a 1-year hiatus for a fellowship in Toronto, Adams joined the UVA faculty in 1995.
His clinical interests include liver, pancreatic, and biliary cancers and diseases. At UVA Health, he established a pancreatic cancer program that screens high-risk patients, and uses novel treatments for those diagnosed with it.
Dr. Adams has served in various leadership roles at UVA Health, including chief of hepatobiliary and pancreatic surgery, and physician service line leader for oncology.
Nationally, Dr. Adams has served in several leadership roles, including:
- President of the Society of Clinical Surgery
- President of the Americas Hepato-Pancreato-Biliary Association
- Chair of the American Board of Surgery
- Chair of Complex General Surgical Oncology Board
He's also served on numerous editorial boards.
In his spare time, Dr. Adams’ primary focus is his family, although he enjoys reading and fly fishing for trout.
Academic Information
- Department
- Surgery
- Academic Role
- Professor
- Division
- Surgical Oncology / Endocrine Surgery
- Research Interests
- Cell adhesion signaling in tumor invasion and metastasis clinical trials for gastrointestinal malignancies
- Gender
- Male
- Languages
- English
- Age Groups Seen
- Adults (21-65)
Older Adults (65+)
- Primary Education
- University of Virginia School of Medicine
- Residency
- University of Virginia School of Medicine
- Certification
- American Board of Surgery (Thoracic and Cardiac Surgery)
Highlights
Surgical Oncologist Reid Adams, MD
My name is Reid Adams and I am a liver, pancreatic and bile duct surgeon, so I take care of patients that have diseases of those organs. Many of those diseases include cancer. A majority of the patients that have cancers have very complicated cancers that require multidisciplinary care by not only myself and my partners, but a multidisciplinary team of physicians that are really focused on providing the optimal care for their specific cancer. The patients that we see are in a very terrifying part of their life. So we try to, not only provide care for the individual and specific condition that they're here for, but really try to provide a holistic approach to their care, not only for the patients but also for the families because those families are caregivers. They obviously have a lot of concern about the patient themselves and so we try to provide a holistic approach to both the patient and their family to be sure everybody gets the care that they need. One of the advantages at UVA is we have experts in the entire spectrum of care. So, what that means for both the patient as well as for all of us as caregivers is they're experts in essentially any type of care that the patient will need. That allows us to take the best care of the patients, it allows us to provide a broad spectrum of care to a variety of patients, and having experts in all those areas really provides the patient the best possible care that they can get.
Awards
- 2011-2020 Best Doctors in America® List
- 2015 One of America's Top Cancer Doctors, Newsweek®