Richard Freeman, M.D.

Richard Freeman currently serves as the senior executive for special initiatives in clinical affairs, professor of surgery at Dell Medical School and courtesy professor of information, operations and risk management at the McCombs School of Business at The University of Texas at Austin. He is responsible for the development, implementation and growth of all aspects of the clinical practice for the faculty of Dell Medical School.

Previously, Freeman served for six years as the William N. and Bessie Allyn Professor and chair of surgery at Dartmouth Medical School and Dartmouth Hitchcock Medical Center. Prior to moving to Dartmouth, Freeman was a professor of surgery and transplantation at Tufts University School of Medical and Tufts Medical Center. He received his medical degree from Jefferson Medical College in Philadelphia and did his general surgical training at the Harvard Surgical Service, New England Deaconess Hospital in Boston and as a registrar in surgery at Royal Aberdeen Infirmary in Aberdeen, Scotland. He completed a transplantation surgery fellowship at the Deaconess Hospital in 1990.

Freeman is an internationally recognized expert in organ transplantation with a particular focus on organ allocation policy. He has been an adviser to many health ministries and regulatory bodies across the globe and has held numerous international, national and regional leadership positions in professional societies and transplantation organizations. In 2002, Freeman, as chair of the National Committee, was charged with developing organ allocation policy of liver transplantation. Pursuant to which, he led a transformation in organ allocation policy that has since become the world’s standard.

Freeman is a member of numerous professional societies in the field of surgery and academic medicine and has served simultaneously as an associate editor for both Liver Transplantation and the American Journal of Transplantation. He is the author of over 300 papers, book chapters and abstracts published in peer-reviewed literature. Freeman has been the principal investigator of multiple clinical trials and National Institutes of Health–funded studies.

More recently, Freeman has translated the lessons learned in the transplantation world to bring value-based health care design with a population health focus to much broader clinical practice.