OU Health Names Chief Physician Executive, President of OU Health Partners

OU Health neurosurgeon Ian F. Dunn, M.D., has been named Chief Physician Executive for the OU Health enterprise, President of OU Health Partners, and Vice Chair of the OU Health Partners Board of Directors.

Dunn joined the enterprise in 2018, serving as Professor and Chair of the Department of Neurosurgery in the OU College of Medicine. His broad experience as a physician, researcher and educator has been transformational for the campus, and he will now provide crucial leadership as OU Health continues its integration as the state’s only comprehensive academic healthcare system.

“We are excited to announce that Dr. Dunn will serve in this critical and dynamic role for OU Health and OU Health Partners,” said Harold Burkhart, M.D., Acting CEO for OU Health. “Since we officially formed OU Health in July, he has provided leadership on an interim basis, and his guidance has been essential as we have merged our hospitals and physician group into a single entity providing seamless patient care. By joining the senior leadership team on a permanent basis and formally taking the helm of OU Health Partners as President, he will continue to elevate OU Health with his skills and passion for academic healthcare.”

OU Health Partners is the new physician and provider practice created by the unification of key elements of the health system into a single enterprise known as OU Health. The OU Health Partners Board oversees the practice, the largest such group in Oklahoma, providing more specialty and subspecialty expertise for adults and children than anywhere in the state.

John Zubialde, M.D., OU College of Medicine Executive Dean and Board Chair of OU Health Partners, said he is proud to be able to partner with Dr. Dunn in this highly important role for OU Health. “Ian is an outstanding physician and executive. He has put his heart and soul into advancing the Department of Neurosurgery from the moment he joined us. His leadership has also been instrumental in the process of transitioning physicians and other providers to the new OU Health Partners structure. He has been central to our work on several major system initiatives, including our focus on equity in healthcare, availability to our patients, the patient experience, the enhancement of our nursing workforce, and much more,” Zubialde said.

Dunn came to OU Health from Boston, where he was faculty in the Department of Neurosurgery at Harvard Medical School and director of the Center for Pituitary and Skull Base Surgery at Brigham and Women’s Hospital. He earned his medical degree at Harvard and completed his general surgery internship at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and his neurosurgery residency at Children’s Hospital/Brigham and Women’s Hospital, where he also served as chief resident. He then completed a postdoctoral fellowship in cancer genomics at the Dana Farber Cancer Institute/Broad Institute in Boston, and a clinical fellowship in skull base neurosurgery at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences/St. Vincent Infirmary Medical Center in Little Rock.

He is a member of numerous national professional societies and gives presentations nationally and internationally on complex brain tumors at the skull base. He is the author of more than 200 peer-reviewed journal publications and 40 chapters of various scientific and/or medical publications in neurosurgery.

“I am grateful to be named to these leadership positions and am excited to be a part of OU Health’s future as we develop new and innovative ways to care for our patients,” Dunn said. “One of our philosophies is ‘Patients First,’ and that is the driving force for every decision we make at OU Health. I am excited to help lead our enterprise into the future.”