Harold Hamm sends two-thirds of a record $150 million OU gift to training and recruiting

The campus-wide $100 million goes to six health professions colleges and a graduate college with more than 4,100 students ^[12], in a state where the Oklahoma Hospital Association reports critical shortages of health care workers ^[9]. "If you look at hospitals in the state of Oklahoma, we have more than 90 hospitals that lose money on providing care to patients," Rich Rasmussen, the association's president and chief executive, told local station FOX 25 ^[10]. "The only way they make up for that loss are in the supplemental Medicaid payments," he said, adding that these are "the payments that Congress has cut" ^[14]. The gift's listed uses are training, recruiting, a director's budget and buildings, and none of them covers those losses ^[4][5].

The research side has a track record, or rather a track record as measured by the university receiving the money. OU says NIH funding tied to the diabetes center rose from $5 million to $33 million after Hamm's 2007 lead gift, an increase of $28 million, or 6.6 times the starting level ^[7][2]. Hamm put more than $50 million into the center over that period ^[6]. If the $33 million is an annual figure (the account does not say), one year of federal money now equals about two-thirds of everything Hamm had given the center ^[5]. OU also says the campus has made the top 100 institutions for NIH funding for the first time, which it puts in the top 4% nationally ^[11].

I think the $100 million will do more for Oklahoma than the $30 million will do for diabetes science, because the shortage the state reports is in health care workers ^[9]. The counter-thesis is that the NIH line is the only return anyone has measured, and it belongs to the diabetes center ^[7]. If Kirwan uses his budget to recruit investigators who win grants, the $33 million keeps climbing and the research third has the better case. If that figure stalls, Hamm's money ends up standing in for federal grants instead of attracting them. The campus-wide money could also show results first, in hires and trained staff, and the diabetes center would then be the smaller part of the outcome. The view is wrong if the gift agreement ties Kirwan's $30 million to projects Hamm picked himself.

The targeting comes with a naming: the Oklahoma City campus becomes the Harold Hamm Health Campus ^[3]. The new gift is about three-fifths of a lifetime total to OU nearing $250 million, and that total is about 1.4% of his estimated net worth ^[7][6]. "My hope is that this gift will help make Oklahoma a place where the next great medical breakthrough happens," Hamm said in a statement ^[13].