Department of Medicine

Richard Walsh, MD, FACC, FACP, FAHA
John H Hord Professor
Chairman of the Department of Medicine
Physician-in-Chief
University Hospitals Health System

Richard A. Walsh, M.D. is the John H. Hord Professor and Chairman of the Department of Medicine at Case Western Reserve University and Physician-in-Chief of University Hospitals Health System. In these capacities he is responsible for the development of patient care, research, and teaching of the largest department of the School of Medicine and University Hospitals.

His department currently ranks 11 of 126 Departments of Medicine in NIH funding. There are over 220 full time faculty members and 12 divisions including: Cardiovascular Medicine, Hematology/Oncology, Gastroenterology, Infectious Disease, Hypertension, Pulmonary/Critical Care and Sleep Medicine, Rheumatology, Geriatric Medicine, General Internal Medicine, Nephrology, and Endocrinology.

He also serves on the Dean’s Advisory Committee at Case School of Medicine, the President’s Advisory Committee of University Hospitals of Cleveland, Chairman of the Finance Committee for the Faculty Practice Plan, and Past Chairman of the Executive Committee of the Medical Services Organization.

Dr. Walsh obtained his undergraduate and M.D. degree from Georgetown University magna cum laude. He was Medical School Class Valedictorian and President of the Medical Honors Society. His Internal Medicine housestaff training occurred at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill and his cardiovascular fellowship training at Georgetown University Hospitals. He is board certified in Internal Medicine and Cardiology.

His initial faculty appointment was in the Department of Medicine and the Division of Cardiology at the University of Texas Health Science Center in San Antonio where he advanced from assistant to full professor. During that ten year span, he was the director of the clinical and research catheterization and hemodynamics laboratories at that institution and the Southwest Foundation for Biomedical Research. He then became the Mabel S. Stonehill Professor, Chief of the Division of Cardiology and the inaugural Director of the Cardiovascular Center at the University of Cincinnati for eight years where he was awarded and directed one of five National Institutes of Health sponsored Specialized Centers for Research in Heart Failure. This program pioneered the use of genetically engineered mice to elucidate mechanisms of cardiac hypertrophy and heart failure and developed many of the approaches now widely utilized to characterize cardiac physiology and pathophysiology of mice in vitro and in vivo.

His laboratory, which was continuously funded by the American Heart Association and National Institutes of Health for over 20 years, has focused on mechanisms responsible for congestive heart failure. In particular, he has contributed to our knowledge of how aberrant signal transduction alters cardiac size and function. He has contributed over 240 full length scientific publications and edited four books. He is Immediate Past Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Molecular and Cellular Cardiology, Senior Editor of the 12th and 13th Editions of Hurst’s The Heart, on the Executive Board of the Association of Professors of Medicine, a member of the American Society of Clinical Investigation and the Association of American Physicians among others. He has served as Chairman of the Scientific Publishing Committee of the American Heart Association and on the editorial boards of all of the major Cardiology journals and has chaired study sections for the National Institutes of Health and the American Heart Association.