Dr. Ashkar named Lafayette General Health Chief Medical Officer

Lafayette General Health (LGH) announced that Dr. Ziad M. Ashkar is being employed as the system’s new Chief Medical Officer (CMO), effective November 1. Dr. Ashkar has practiced as a nephrologist at Acadiana Renal Physicians since 2002.

As CMO of the LGH system, he will be instrumental in aligning best practices across all affiliated hospitals. He will be working closely with system administrators to develop and assess quality metrics used to drive excellence in the delivery of health care.

“We are bless to have someone with Dr. Ashkar’s skillset and training to serve in this important role for our health system,” says David L. Callecod, FACHE, president of the LGHsystem. “He brings a keen understanding of excellence in patient care as well as the overall market as we move to a value-based industry.”

Starting off as a physician in Mamou in 1995, Dr. Ashkar has since built a distinguished career in both the teaching and practicing of his medical profession. He most recently served as Section Chief of Medicine teaching LSU residents at University Hospital & Clinics (UHC). He had taken over that teaching program and helped guide it to full accreditation in February of this year. In his CMO position, he will give up his private practice, but will continue to teach residents.

Practicing at Lafayette General Medical Center (LGMC) starting in 2009, Dr. Ashkar served as Chief Medical Officer of the hospital from 2011-2013. As LGMC’s CMO, he was in charge of the Hospitalist program, quality department and medical staff office. He was also a member of LGMC’s Medical Executive Committee and was Chairman of Medicine from 2009-2011.

Dr. Ashkar earned his Bachelor of Science and his Doctor of Medicine from American University of Beirut, Lebanon, where he also completed his internship in Surgery. He did his residency in Internal Medicine at Good Samaritan Hospital of Maryland-Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, MD. Following a Fellowship in Nephrology at Emory University in Atlanta, GA, Dr. Ashkar earned a Master of Business Administration from LSU in Baton Rouge; a Master of Public Health at Johns Hopkins; and a Doctor of Science from Tulane University in New Orleans.

Certifications that Dr. Ashkar has held include the following: American Board of Internal Medicine, American Board of Internal Medicine in Nephrology, American Society of Hypertension (as a specialist in clinical hypertension) and the National Board of Public Health Examiners.

In his academic teaching experience, Dr. Ashkar has been a teacher of LSU residents as both a Clinical Associate Professor and Clinical Assistant Professor of Medicine at LGMCand at UHC. He also mentored and taught LSU Family Practice residents in Nephrology from 2007-2013. From 1996 to 2002, he was a Clinical Assistant Professor of Medicine at the Tulane University School of Medicine in New Orleans.

A 50-year-old husband and father of two, Dr. Ashkar is trilingual (English, French and Arabic), born in Frankfurt, Germany, and raised mostly in Lebanon.