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. 2017:21:16-069.
doi: 10.7812/TPP/16-069.

The Evolution of the Medical School Deanship: From Patriarch to CEO to System Dean

Danny A Schieffler  1 , Philip M Farrell  2 , Marc J Kahn  3 , Richard A Culbertson  4
Affiliations

The Evolution of the Medical School Deanship: From Patriarch to CEO to System Dean

Danny A Schieffler et al. Perm J. 2017.

Abstract

Medical school deanship in the US has evolved during the past 200 years as the complexity of the US health care system has evolved. With the introduction of Medicare and Medicaid and the growth of the National Institutes of Health, the 19th-century and first half of the 20th-century role of the medical school dean as guild master transformed into that of resource allocator as faculty practice plans grew in scope and grew as an important source of medical school and university revenue. By 2000, the role of the medical school dean had transformed into that of CEO, with the dean having control over school mission and strategy, faculty practice plans, education, research dollars, and philanthropy. An alternative path to the Dean/CEO model has developed-the System Dean, who functions as a team player within a broader health system that determines the mission for the medical school and the related clinical enterprise. In this paper, the authors discuss the evolution of the medical school dean with respect to scope of authority and role within the health care system.

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Conflict of interest statement

Disclosure Statement

Funding/support: Dr Culbertson is supported in part by grant # 1 U54 GM104940 from the National Institutes of Health, which funds the Louisiana Clinical and Translational Science Center. The content of this article is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the National Institutes of Health. No funding was received for this work from any source. The authors have no other conflicts of interest to disclose.

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