Evolution of the Departmental Chair in US Academic Medical Institutions: A Descriptive Appraisal

The strength of Academic Medical Institutions (AMIs) is founded on their academic departments, both clinical and basic science. The evolving role of the departmental chair is dictated by multitude of influences including the tectonic changes in the terrain of US healthcare and academic medicine with wanning revenue sources, complexity of administrative constructs in AMIs, situational needs, and regional competitive market trends. These subtleties underscore the importance of rigorous screening and recruitment of a departmental chair whose stance will be congruent with an AMI's mission, vision, values in alignment with the institutional leadership, in addition to possessing the requisite professional qualifications and personal attributes. Success of a departmental chair is determined by meeting expectations as a manager, leader, and scholar with performance metrics for the role against benchmarks in specific domains of academic medicine. This descriptive treatise expounds on the important implications of numerous elements and anticipated challenges contributing to the inexorable evolution of the departmental chair's role in US AMIs.