Dean's Corner
On June 30, 2024, Richard DiCarlo, MD officially ended his two-year term as Interim Dean of the LSU School of Medicine by being named the permanent and 18th Dean of the LSU School of Medicine. Read on for a brief Q&A with the LSU School of Medicine’s newest Dean.
You’ve been the Interim Dean for two years now. What actually changes with the official
designation to permanent Dean?
Not much has changed on a day-to-day basis. I am still working on the same projects
and initiatives to improve the school and position us for future growth. What has
changed is the honor and humility that I feel. It is deeply humbling to serve our
outstanding faculty, staff, and learners as Dean. I have tremendous respect for my
colleagues. I firmly believe in our mission and I am proud of what we do every day.
It is a tremendous honor for me to serve as the Dean of LSU School of Medicine.
Your time here did not begin with being named Interim Dean. Can you describe what
your personal attachment to LSU Health and the School of Medicine is?
I am not from Louisiana; I moved here right after graduating from Haverford College
thinking that I would be here for about two years. I have lived here since then and
have grown to appreciate the unique culture of New Orleans and Louisiana. I was a
‘state resident’ when I decided to go to medical school, and LSU was an incredibly
affordable option. So I stayed for medical school thinking that I would return to
New York for residency. I loved taking care of patients at Charity Hospital, so I
remained for residency, and became interested in HIV and infectious diseases. I served
as chief resident of medicine and then decided to stay for fellowship training in
ID. I continued to love working with the local population, particularly the marginalized
population of patients with HIV and AIDS. LSU offered me a faculty position in the
Department of Medicine and Section of Infectious Diseases. It was around that time
that I realized I was not going back to New York!
My career on the faculty has provided me with wonderful opportunities. I had a typical academic infectious disease role for the first 10 years. I was busy with patient care, clinical trials, and teaching. I also served as the clinical director for the City of New Orleans STI Clinic for five years. In that role, I worked with the State Office of Public Health on STI prevention, and I remained active in clinical and epidemiological research.
Drs. Rob Marier and Charlie Hilton ‘recruited’ me into the Dean’s Office to develop and oversee the medical student educational programs in 2001. For the next phase of my career, I did less research and a little less clinical work. I was heavily involved in curriculum development, curriculum management, accreditation, and, of course, the restoration of our educational programs in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. In 2016, Dr. Nelson offered me the position of Senior Associate Dean for Faculty and Institutional Affairs and I left the curriculum office in the able hands of Dr. Robin English.
Faculty and Institutional Affairs pulled me further away from teaching and clinical medicine. I remained active in some student courses, and I continued to staff the medicine hospitalist service, but my role became largely administrative. One of my primary roles was trying to ensure that junior faculty were also able to have a wonderful career in academic medicine, even in this time of increasing financial pressures on the school.
LSU Health School of Medicine has provided me with amazing opportunities in patient care, clinical research, teaching, program oversight, and faculty oversight. That is what I bring to my role as Dean. I want to provide those same opportunities to our faculty and staff. I am also very committed to our mission – to serve the state and regional communities with compassionate and excellent patient care, to advance medical knowledge, and to educate the next generation of physicians and scientists.
Beyond your personal connection, what do you think makes the LSU School of Medicine
so special?
This question makes me reflect on why Governor Huey P. Long founded the school of
medicine in 1931. Long knew that Louisiana needed doctors, and he knew that Louisiana’s
population needed a great medical center. He had the vision to build a new Charity
Hospital, and it opened in 1939 as the second largest hospital in the country. He
had the vision to start LSU School of Medicine so that every qualified student from
Louisiana could become a doctor. His vision was that the school would serve the patients
of the state and educate physicians for Louisiana’s future. We still have that commitment
to ‘service’. It is one of our core values, and it is palpable in what we do every
day. I believe that is what sets us apart.
What is your immediate focus for the next year?
First is completion of the school’s Strategic Plan. We hope to have a draft available
in the coming weeks and we will put that out for public comment. Then we hope to finalize
the plan in October.
Second is to help guide our preparations for LCME accreditation. Dr. Robin English is ably leading this effort and I meet with her on a regular basis. This is a very rigorous process and it requires a tremendous amount of work. We will submit thousands of pages of documents next July, and we will likely uncover challenges that we need to address before the LCME comes in October 2025.
Third is to develop and implement educational programs in the CALS building. Dr. Peter DeBlieux is leading this effort. We expect to begin training students in our standardized patient center next summer. We will need to raise money from industry and philanthropy to outfit the facilities with medical equipment and simulators. We expect to provide innovative training programs for our learners, and to provide educational research opportunities for our faculty for many years to come in the CALS building.
Fourth is to organize the research enterprise for future growth. In December 2025, three floors of newly renovated laboratory space will open in the MEB. We would like to organize our research enterprise around areas of strength, and support our researchers with more centralized support such as effective core laboratories. I think this project has the potential to transform our research enterprise, and allow it to flourish well into the future.
Finally, I believe the most important initiative that I am working on is to revise our clinical contracts with LCMC. We currently have hundreds of independently negotiated contracts that pay physicians according to different benchmarks and pay the school different percentages of overhead. We need to provide more clarity to our physicians about clinical expectations, salary, and financial incentives. We also need to make sure the hospital partners provide adequate funding to manage our residency programs, and adequate funding for faculty development and faculty support. At the same time, we need clarity about overhead on our hospital contracts, clarity about how funds flow to support the missions of the school, and clarity about how funds flow so departments can build reserves and strategically invest in their faculty and academic programs.
What are some major challenges that you see your team tackling?
We are constantly trying to improve. During the strategic planning process, faculty,
learners, staff and external stakeholders pointed out areas in which they would like
to see improvement. Those include:
- Better internal and external communication and “branding” of the school and LSUHSC
- More community engagement to address health equity
- Creation of clear pathways for faculty and staff to succeed, grow, and serve the learners and the community.
I agree that improvement in these areas will make the school a better place to work and lead to greater success in carrying out its missions. These are certainly challenges that we would like to address for the future. Overall, I am very optimistic about our future, and I am deeply honored to serve as Dean.