OHSU board names new chair, vice chair
Oregon Health & Science University’s board of directors on Friday passed resolutions naming a new chair and vice chair.
Susan King, M.S., RN, CEN, FAAN, is the new chair of the OHSU Board of Directors, and Justin Hurley Braswell, M.B.A., is vice chair.
Board members are appointed by the governor, Tina Kotek, and confirmed by the Oregon State Senate. The board’s role is to exercise their business judgment to support and advance OHSU’s health care, education and research missions.
King, a prominent nurse leader and advocate, has been involved with the OHSU Board of Directors and was previously the long-time executive director of the Oregon Nurses Association. King has invested in both a professional nursing career as a clinician, administrator, lobbyist, health policy adviser and advocate — as well as a community activist on civic issues such as housing, neighborhood preservation and development, and election of leaders at the city, local, state and national level.
Hurley Braswell has nearly 30 years of experience specializing in health care, government office and corporate commercial markets. As executive vice president and chief operating officer at Rubicon Investments Corporation, a fourth-generation Oregon family business, Hurley Braswell leads real property development and portfolio management, leveraging his executive expertise to drive efficiency and innovation in large-scale projects.
Chad Paulson, J.D., Ruth Beyer, J.D., and Steve Zika were also recognized for their service to the board as their terms ended.
In other business:
Provost and Executive Vice President Marie Chisholm-Burns, Pharm.D., Ph.D., M.P.H., M.B.A., FCCP, FASHP, FAST, FNAP, FACHE — along with colleagues Constance Tucker, Ph.D., vice provost of educational improvement and innovation and associate professor; Cherie Honnell, vice provost for enrollment management and academic programs; and Elias Cohen, Ph.D., assistant vice provost for institutional research and effectiveness — presented the Office of Institutional Research and Effectiveness’s annual review of educational data and student learning, which tracks key indicators of success by OHSU learners. For the 2022–23 cohort, 88% to 100% of students in OHSU’s largest programs graduated on time. In almost every area, OHSU students outperformed national averages on credentialing exams. Importantly, degrees granted in 30-30-30 programs have increased about 18% since the 2021–22 academic year, an important measure of OHSU’s success in meeting the Oregon Legislature’s investment to address the state’s urgent health care workforce needs. The 30-30-30 program sets benchmarks for OHSU to increase the number of graduates in certain health care programs by at least 30%, including nurses, physician assistants, public health professionals and medical physicists. These successes come at a time, Chisholm-Burns said, when students face significant challenges: Recent federal legislation eliminated the Graduate PLUS loan program, which OHSU students used to borrow nearly $30 million in 2024–25, as well as lowered annual and lifetime limits for student loans.
Lawrence Furnstahl, OHSU executive vice president and chief financial officer, and Nathan Selden, M.D., Ph.D., executive vice president and dean of the OHSU School of Medicine, presented unaudited financial results for fiscal year 2025. He said that compared with fiscal year 2024, revenues grew 9.4% but expenses grew by 9.3%, resulting in nearly the same deficit. Four items had especially large changes over this period: non-hospital pharmacy services, Information Technology Group funding, partner hospital support and House Bill 3320 financial assistance to lower income patients. Putting aside these items, the “core” or underlying OHSU loss increased by nine times over six years, from a relatively modest deficit of $95 million in 2019 to a large loss of $808 million in 2024. Given these longer-term trends, Furnstahl said financial imperatives going forward are:
- Keeping full-time equivalent position growth below 2% year over year
- Increasing productivity to continue to meet OHSU’s missions with lower position growth
- Controlling the increase in salaries and benefits
- Investing in and achieving strategic growth in profitable services
- Aligning research and education with sustainable funding sources