Crouse Health Appoints Tarakad Ramachandran, MD, as Stroke Director

Tarakad Ramachandran, MD, has been appointed Stroke Director for Crouse Hospital and the Crouse Neuroscience Institute. Working closely with Crouse’s neurosciences team, Dr. Ramachandran will provide leadership to help build on the hospital’s stroke program, with the aim of achieving Comprehensive Stroke Center certification.

Highly regarded nationally and internationally as a clinician and educator, Dr. Ramachandran came to Syracuse in 1976 with broad-based training in internal medicine from the United Kingdom. After two years of residency and a year of chief residency in neurology at Upstate Medical University, he advanced his training with a year of fellowship in neuromuscular diseases and electrophysiology from Boston University School of Medicine. He returned to Syracuse in 1980 to pursue his career in neurology at Crouse and University hospitals. Dr. Ramachandran served as chair of neurology at Crouse from 1984 to 2013.

In addition to being a full academic professor in neurology, Dr. Ramachandran has also held positions as clinical professor in neurosurgery, internal medicine, family medicine and psychiatry in addition to being a lecturer for the Center of Bioethics and Humanities at Upstate Medical University. He has received numerous awards over the years, including Upstate’s first Gold Award in Clinical Medicine (2008), and has been honored with the SUNY President’s Award for Excellence in Teaching, the SUNY President’s Employee Recognition Award and the SUNY President’s Award for Excellence in Faculty Service. This year he was honored with the Leonard Tow Humanism in Medicine Award from the Arnold P. Gold Foundation. The American Academy of Neurology honored him with its most coveted Ken Viste Award in 2008.

Dr. Ramachandran has a strong interest in vascular neurology (stroke medicine) and chaired Crouse’s Operation Stroke Committee from 1996 to 2000. As chief of neurology at Crouse, he was instrumental in creating the hospital’s Stroke Unit, which was the first in the region to be designated with “Gold Plus” performance achievement from the American Stroke Association. He also was very active in the creation of the Stroke Unit at Upstate, from which he retired in 2010 as a Professor Emeritus of Neurology and Psychiatry.

Dr. Ramachandran is a fellow of the American Academy of Neurology, which awarded him the A.B. Baker Teaching Award in 2007. Over the years, he has contributed significantly to neurological training and teaching in India as a visiting professor to many of its universities.

In the 1980s he helped create a free CT scanning program for the underprivileged in Pune, India. As a delegate of the World Stroke Foundation, he participated in the inauguration of the Regional Asian Stroke Congress and first Indian Stroke Association Meeting, endorsed by the World Stroke Federation, at Chennai, India in 2006. Ever since, he has been a visiting faculty at the Indian Stroke Association’s annual meetings.

Dr. Ramachandran holds a master’s in business administration from Syracuse University as a master’s in public health from Upstate.