A New Orleans medical school four years in the making just cleared its biggest hurdle yet. The Xavier Ochsner College of Medicine has received preliminary accreditation from the Liaison Committee on Medical Education, and the school says it will begin recruiting students in the coming weeks for its inaugural class, which is expected to start in August 2027.
The milestone comes after an LCME survey visit in June, according to a release distributed via prnewswire.com. The college is a joint venture between Xavier University of Louisiana and Ochsner Health, formally established as a partnership in 2024, and it is being described as the only HBCU college of medicine in the Gulf South. As NOLA.com reports, the project was first announced four years ago and has moved through curriculum design, faculty hiring and classroom build-out in the time since.
Leonardo Seoane, who serves as president and founding dean of the college, completed part of his own medical training at Charity Hospital, per NOLA.com. He has said the school was planned around how medical students learn and how doctors are trained today, and that it believes the students it accepts can complete the work and become doctors.
A Katrina-Era Building Gets a New Mission
The college will be based in a renovated section of Benson Towers in downtown New Orleans, a building that partially flooded after Hurricane Katrina in 2005 and once housed a makeshift medical clinic for the community in the storm's aftermath, according to NOLA.com. Seoane has said the same space that cared for the community after Katrina will now train the next generation of doctors. First- and second-year classes will be held there, with team-based learning rooms, a medical laboratory and a common student area, per Xavier University of Louisiana.
Third- and fourth-year students will complete clinical clerkships at Ochsner facilities, the university's FAQ page notes. NOLA.com adds that Benson Towers will also house an auditorium, anatomy labs and faculty offices, along with small-group learning rooms, a chapel, student lounges and vending machines stocked with healthy snacks.
Hands-On Learning Over Lecture Halls
The curriculum will emphasize interdisciplinary collaboration, compassionate patient care and high standards of medical excellence, according to the university's FAQ page. NOLA.com reports the college will favor case studies and hands-on learning over large-auditorium lectures, with students collaborating on hypothetical clinical cases in small groups and practicing IV setup and other clinical skills on lifelike patient simulators. Augmented and virtual reality learning tools are also planned, alongside four academic societies that will provide faculty advising and peer mentoring.
Xavier University president Reynold Verret has said graduates should be proficient not just in medicine but in the humanity of being a physician, per NOLA.com. The college plans to offer merit-based scholarships to expand access to medical education, according to New Orleans CityBusiness, along with financial aid and counseling from a licensed social worker.
Timeline Questions Linger
Accounts of exactly when recruitment would start have shifted over time. Xavier University's own FAQ page states that the college will welcome its first class only after receiving preliminary accreditation, which the school now says it has secured. But an earlier report from America Magazine in 2024 said it would likely take three years to win LCME accreditation before the school could start recruiting an initial class of roughly 50 students. NOLA.com's reporting aligns with that enrollment figure, citing a plan to recruit about 50 students for the inaugural class.
The college will be eligible for full accreditation once it graduates its first students, NOLA.com reports. Its roots run deeper than the medical school itself: Xavier and Ochsner's partnership dates to the 1980s with Xavier's College of Pharmacy, the state's oldest, and has since expanded into genetic counseling and physician's assistant programs, according to the university.
Filling a Shortage, and a Historic Gap
The push arrives as federal health workforce projections point to a widening physician gap. The Health Resources and Services Administration says the country could face a shortage of more than 141,000 physicians by 2038, per the prnewswire.com release, while the university's FAQ page cites an Association of American Medical Colleges projection of up to 86,000 physicians by 2036. Louisiana is projected to rank third nationally for a physician shortage by 2030, according to the same Xavier University source, and the college's release says 60 of the state's 64 parishes are federally designated Health Professional Shortage Areas.
NOLA.com notes that Black doctors make up about 5% of U.S. doctors, per the Association of American Medical Colleges, even though Black people make up about 14% of the U.S. population. Xavier University sends more Black students to medical school than nearly any other institution, according to NOLA.com, and the school is the country's only Catholic historically Black college or university. Once it opens, Xavier Ochsner College of Medicine is set to join a short list of historically Black medical schools in the country, including Howard University College of Medicine, Meharry Medical College, Morehouse School of Medicine and Charles R. Drew University of Medicine and Science, according to the university's FAQ page. Morgan State opened a college of osteopathic medicine in Baltimore in 2023, and NOLA.com reports that New Orleans itself once had a historically Black medical school, the John D. Flint Medical College, which closed in 1911.
The college's backers also point to projected economic ripple effects. The school's operations are projected to contribute $152.5 million in economic impact across Louisiana and support more than 1,185 jobs statewide by 2040, including $122 million in New Orleans, according to the prnewswire.com release.
