Alum carries lessons learned as a medical student into role leading Louisiana’s largest health system

By Kim Catley

It started with a patient encounter.

After graduating from the Virginia Commonwealth University School of Medicine in 1996, Timothy L. Riddell, M.D., returned home to Louisiana to complete his residency with Ochsner Health. That launched a nearly 30-year career working as a family medicine physician and rising through the health system’s leadership ranks. In January, he was appointed executive vice president and chief operating officer, overseeing clinical operations across 47 hospitals and more than 370 health and urgent care centers.

But Riddell traces his trajectory back even further — to a single patient he treated as a medical student on the MCV Campus. 

During an internal medicine rotation, he saw a patient with dementia. Her condition was advancing, and after several years of caring for her at home, her family was considering moving her to assisted living. The hospital care team could have followed that path, but Riddell’s attending physician insisted on additional testing to determine the source of the dementia.

In a rare and unexpected twist, they discovered her dementia was treatable. 

“In that environment, we were taught that every patient has a story and it’s an opportunity for us to make their life better,” Riddell said. 

A few weeks later, Riddell stopped by the patient’s room, shortly before she was discharged. The patient introduced him to her daughter, whom she hadn’t recognized in five years. 

“That one patient pulled it all together in one clarifying moment and inspired me to go into family medicine,” he said. “I realized that I wanted to take care of patients from birth through end-of-life. That lesson of listening to someone’s story also stuck with me my whole career. It shaped the kind of doctor I am, the kind of leader I want to be and the kind of person I want to be in the community.” 

‘An opportunity to give back’

When Riddell moved back to Louisiana and started working as a family medicine doctor with Ochsner, that sense of community was top of mind. He worked in the next town over from where he grew up and treated family and friends he had known since childhood. 

Riddell was also positioned to get a close look at the systemic healthcare challenges facing patients and physicians across the state. He often looked out for opportunities to improve care in his community. 

His drive to jump in and fix things naturally led to a series of leadership positions. He became the lead physician in his primary care group, then a medical director overseeing several different specialties and eventually the entire region. He also served on Ochsner’s board of directors and helped lead an expansive period of growth that established Ochsner as the largest health system in Louisiana. 

“That led to me having an interest in not just the medical leadership side, but the organizational and operational side,” Riddell said. “It’s not the most common pathway, but I think my experience as a physician helps me know what it feels like at the patient-facing level. At the end of the day, being a doctor is about preventing, diagnosing and treating — and so is being an administrative leader.”

As he steps into the role of chief operating officer, his attention is trained on three challenges he believes are present throughout the American healthcare system: access to care, quality and consistency of care, and the experience of both patients and caregivers. Focus on those three areas, he said, and everything else will fall into place.

So far, that’s meant exploring the use of new technologies and tools to increase face-to-face time with patients, as well as opening a new medical school in partnership with Xavier University of Louisiana.

“By building a stronger healthcare system, we can build a stronger educational system and a stronger economy,” he said. “Spending time in Virginia showed me what high-quality care looked like, and it’s been a blessing to bring that sensibility to people in my home state. This is an opportunity to give back to my community.”

This story was published in the spring 2026 issue of 12th & Marshall. You can find the current and past issues online.