Richard Culbertson, PhD

Richard Culbertson, PhD, serves as Director and Professor of Health Policy and Systems Management at Louisiana State University School of Public Health, New Orleans, positions he has held since 2012. He currently serves at Tulane School of Medicine as an adjunct professor in the Department of Family and Community Medicine and teaches FAMY5051, Health Policy and Health Reform, for Tulane medical students. Dr. Culbertson has taught at Tulane for more than fifteen years.

Dr. Culbertson has extensive experience in administrative healthcare roles. From 2013 to 2015, he balanced his role as Director of LSU Health Policy and Systems Management  with the role of Interim Dean of the School of Public Health. From 2004 to 2009, he was a member of the Governing Board of Touro Infirmary and helped lead the hospital through the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. His voluntary board service also included membership on the Board of Directors of Aurora HealthCare, Wisconsin’s largest private employer, from 1994-2007 and as chair of the system board from 2002-2005.  The Richard A. Culbertson Scholarship in Healthcare Leadership was established by Aurora in recognition of his contributions. He also served on the American Hospital Association’s Committee on Governance from 2006 to 2009 and its Leadership Development Council from 2009 to 2012. He is currently Director of the Ethics Key Resource of the Louisiana Clinical and Translational Science Center, a nine institution consortium of Louisiana organizations funded by NIH.

He served as Director of the Master of Health Administration program and tenured Associate Professor at Indiana University-Indianapolis from 1995 until 1997; as Associate Dean of the Medical School and Associate Vice Chancellor for the Health Sciences at the University of Wisconsin-Madison from 1992 to 1995; as the Founding Administrative Direction of Administration and Finance as UCSF Medical Group from 1987 to 1992; and as the CEO of Kaiser-Permanente Sunset Medical Center from 1984 to 1987.

Dr. Culbertson’s primary scholarly interests are in ethical governance of healthcare organizations, managed care, and the organizational structure of medical schools. He has written on topics such as the evolution and influence of medical school deans, the ethics of the 2008 Google Flu Trends project, and the financial and institutional considerations of increasing medical school class size. He is a nationally recognized author and lecturer in healthcare management ethics. He is a member of Phi Beta Kappa and Delta Omega honorary societies. In April 2018, he and his research team received the American College of Physicians Quality Connect Champion award.

Dr. Culbertson possesses a strong dedication to teaching and academia. In 2015, the School of Public Health awarded him the Allen Copping Award for excellence in teaching. In 2016, he endowed the Richard Culbertson Professorship in Health Policy and Systems Management at LSU School of Public Health. Together with his wife, he also endowed the Susan Leary and Richard Culbertson Professorship in Family Medicine at the LSU Medical School.