14    Cone Health Philanthropy
At the heart  
of a revolution
A small team in Greensboro pioneered a 
new approach to treating heart attacks, 
transforming what was possible in community 
medicine — and heart care worldwide.
PRIORITY:  
Heart & Vascular
In 1986, Greensboro drew a young cardiologist, Dr. Thomas D. Stuckey, 
into the earliest stage of a medical movement — a point when the right 
hands could drive the next chapter.
He had imagined this life long before he arrived — first talking about medicine as a 
teenager with his older brother, one night in their backyard, both of them drawn to the 
same calling. 
When Stuckey arrived at Cone Health — then LeBauer HeartCare — he entered a 
program where heart care was shifting, guided by colleagues willing to venture into 
territory others hesitated to enter.
It was the kind of professional home he had always imagined for himself.
The fifth cardiologist on a team caring for nearly 80 patients, Stuckey moved steadily 
from task to task: reading EKGs, performing heart catheterizations and balloon 
angioplasties, reviewing echocardiograms, covering office visits and returning after 
dark when another call came from the ER.
“It was a chaotic but wonderful time,” he recalls.

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