OSU Wexner Medical Center to add 500 to faculty

Ohio State University’s Wexner Medical Center plans to hire 500 new faculty members over the next five years, the university announced Monday.

In the announcement, university officials said demand for patient care and medical education is “greater than ever,” and that the time is right to embrace growth.

Under the plan, Ohio State will hire 350 faculty clinicians and 150 research scientists. The hiring process is already underway, with about 50 new research faculty members in the process of joining the College of Medicine, the announcement said.

The medical center has experienced “tremendous growth” in recent years and is actively planning for more, Dr. K. Craig Kent, dean of the College of Medicine, said in a statement.

“At a time when many academic medical centers are struggling to attract patients, the Wexner Medical Center is recruiting, building and continuing to grow,” Kent said. “We have a grand adventure in front of us.”

The medical center saw its strongest financial year in fiscal 2017, with revenue totaling $3.4 billion. Revenue for the current fiscal year is expected to be even greater, according to a financial update provided at the Wexner Medical Center board meeting last week.

In addition to recruiting a mix of scientists and physician researchers, Ohio State plans to bring new expertise to other developing disciplines, including diabetes, Alzheimer’s disease and opioid research.

“We are going to attract the best and brightest to join the outstanding physicians and scientists who lead the nation in fields ranging from regenerative medicine and wound healing to heart failure and spinal cord injury,” Kent said. “We want to rapidly advance Columbus and Ohio State as a hub for research, patient care and educational innovation.”

Ohio State did not immediately provide estimates for how much it expects to spend on the hiring plan.

The last time Ohio State launched a plan of this magnitude was in 2012, when the university announced it would hire 500 new tenured or tenure-track research faculty members by 2022 as part of its Discovery Themes Initiative, according to Ohio State spokesman Ben Johnson. That hiring campaign focused on problem-solving in health and wellness, energy and environment, and food production and security.

As many as 25 of the new Wexner Medical positions will be funded by the Discovery Themes initiative. The rest are being funded through a variety of internal and external sources, Johnson said in an emailed statement.

All 500 of the hires are expected to be new positions, Johnson said, and that figure does not include hires resulting from attrition.

Plans for the new hires come as Ohio State works to develop a new hospital tower and ambulatory center, anticipated to cost more than $2 billion combined. The new tower, which the university has called “the largest single facilities project ever undertaken” at Ohio State, is expected to have up to 840 beds, replacing and expanding on 440 beds in Rhodes and Doan Hall.

“Instead of ‘if you build it, they will come,’ ” Kent said, “our approach is ‘join us now and help us build for the future.’ ”