Claude Deschamps, M.D., chair of surgery at the Mayo Clinic, has been named president and chief executive officer of the University of Vermont Medical Group and senior associate dean for clinical affairs at the University of Vermont College of Medicine, effective January 2014.

As president of the UVM Medical Group, Deschamps will lead nearly 500 physicians at Fletcher Allen; at the College of Medicine, he will oversee Graduate Medical Education, Continuing Medical Education, and support the development of educational and research opportunities across the clinical operation.

Deschamps has served as the chair of Mayo’s Department of Surgery since 2005 and is the Joseph I. and Barbara Ashkins Professor of Surgery at the Mayo Clinic College of Medicine. He holds master’s faculty privileges in clinical and translational science at the Mayo College of Medicine, and this year became chair of the Mayo Clinic in the Midwest Strategy Work Group Integration Project.

“Dr. Deschamps is an instinctive leader who will provide a steady, reassuring approach during a time of tremendous change in health care,” said Frederick Morin, M.D., dean of the UVM College of Medicine. “We look forward to his arrival on campus in the new year.”

Deschamps received his medical training in his hometown of Montreal, Quebec, at the University of Montreal and the University of Montreal Affiliated Hospitals, and at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota. His research interests include quality of life after anti-reflux procedure, hiatal hernia repair and esophagectomy, and he is part of Mayo’s Epidemiology and Genetics of Lung Cancer Research Program. Deschamps’ numerous professional memberships include the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Canada and as a Fellow of the American College of Surgeons. He was previously co-editor-in-chief of Diseases of the Esophagus for the International Society for Diseases of the Esophagus. He has been honored with multiple teaching awards at Mayo Medical School, and has a remarkable record of publication.