News Release

CONTACT: LESLIE CAPO
(504) 452-9166

LSU BOARD OF SUPERVISORS APPROVES HOLLIER AS PERMANENT CHANCELLOR

Baton Rouge, LA–At their February 3, 2006 meeting, the LSU Board of Supervisors accepted LSU System President Dr. William Jenkins’ recommendation to name Dr. Larry H. Hollier permanent Chancellor of LSU Health Sciences Center in New Orleans. He will also continue to serve as Dean of LSUHSC’s School of Medicine, a post he has held since January 1, 2004. The appointment is effective immediately.

Dr. Hollier, a vascular surgeon, was appointed Acting Chancellor when Dr. John Rock submitted his resignation on November 14, 2005 to return to teaching and research at LSU Health Sciences Center in New Orleans’ School of Medicine. The Supervisors appointed Dr. Rock Chancellor Emeritus at the meeting as well.

“Dr. Hollier has emerged as a dynamic leader during these difficult times for the LSU Health Sciences Center,” said Jenkins. “Under his stable guidance, our health care professional schools have begun the transition back to their home in New Orleans as we continue to recover from the punishing effects of Hurricane Katrina.”

A native of Crowley, LA, Dr. Hollier was President of Mount Sinai Hospital in New York before being recruited to lead his alma mater–the School of Medicine at LSU Health Sciences Center in New Orleans, where he earned his medical degree in 1968, was named Chief Resident in Surgery in 1974, and entered academic medicine with an appointment to the LSUHSC faculty in 1975.

Despite the conventional wisdom that physicians make poor businessmen, Dr. Hollier took on the challenge of dealing with a $100 million deficit at The Mount Sinai Hospital in New York and remaking it as more of a “physician-led institution.” Becoming one of the first of a new breed of physician-CEOs among hospitals nationally, Dr. Hollier was named President of the 1000+ bed hospital in August 2002. Rising from Chairman of Surgery to the center’s chief medical officer (Senior VP and Dean of Clinical Affairs) to the #1 position, he set out to prove that a physician can successfully run a large teaching hospital. Dr. Hollier dealt with some of the same issues he was to face as Dean at LSUHSC in New Orleans–restructuring clinical care in the face of budget reductions at teaching hospitals and devising strategies to care for a large population of uninsured and medically under-served reimbursed at a lower rate than other providers, if at all. But the flooding caused by the levee failures after Katrina dealt a series of challenges the likes of which have never before been seen in this country. Fighting against overwhelming destruction and devastation, Dr. Hollier has devoted energy, innovation and steadfast determination to saving the very medical education and residency programs that educated him and produce the healers who take care of Louisianians.

Prior to his tenure at Mount Sinai, Dr. Hollier was Executive Director of Clinical Affairs and Chairman of Surgery at Health Care International Ltd. in Glasgow, Scotland, UK, an operation he was recruited by Harvard to build. He also held faculty positions at Mayo Medical School and Mayo Graduate School at the University of Minnesota, before being recruited as Chairman of Surgery at Ochsner Clinic in New Orleans. Dr. Hollier is certified by the American Board of Surgery and is certified in General Vascular Surgery. He is a Fellow of the American College of Surgeons, the American College of Cardiology, the Royal College of Surgeons of England, and the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Glasgow, Scotland.

“I am honored and humbled to have received such a vote of confidence,” said Dr. Hollier. “Although we face many more challenges in the weeks and months ahead, there is not another team I would want by my side. The resilience, resourcefulness, and dedication of the faculty, staff, and students of LSU Health Sciences Center in New Orleans is absolutely awe-inspiring. We will return, not as before, but better, with a strength forged by a bond of shared experience and triumph.”

LSU Health Sciences Center in New Orleans is Louisiana’s flagship academic health center. Celebrating 75 years of excellence in education, research, patient care, and community outreach, LSU Health Sciences Center in New Orleans is Louisiana’s health resource. Educating the majority of the State’s health professions workforce, LSU Health Sciences Center in New Orleans comprises schools of medicine, nursing, allied health professions, graduate studies, public health, and Louisiana’s only dental school.