CRMC Board Of Trustees Chair On Korth’s Impact

Cookeville Regional Board of Trustees Chair Dr. Ernest Buchanan said the hospital will have big shoes to fill following CEO Paul Korth’s retirement announcement.

Buchanan said he first met Korth when Buchanan returned to the Cookeville area in 2009, when Korth was the hospital’s CFO. Buchanan said he could immediately see that Korth had a heart for the hospital and the community.

“And indeed as time went by, he just proved time and time again that his number one concern is the hospital and the people in it,”  Buchanan said. “And people in it meaning the patients, the employees, and their families, and anybody that sets foot in there. And the changes over his time here have been really remarkable.”

Buchanan said as a physician in the hospital, he sees Korth’s compassion, patience, and familiarity with the area to be invaluable to the facility. Buchanan said there has been a lot of excitement at the medical center for the last several years, but he has never seen Korth lose his calm or his composure when trying to best for the facility and its patients.

Buchanan said the Board of Trustees will meet with Korth to appoint an interim CEO, likely from within the organization, to serve while they find a permanent replacement. He said that the process is being decided now, but they will take however long it takes to find the best possible candidate.

“When you look at the services we’ve added over this ten years, the new doctors that have come, the new talent that has come,” Buchanan said. “And a lot of people probably don’t realize he has, over the last ten years, surrounded himself with some of the best and brightest people I have ever met in healthcare. And I think that’s set us up for success going forward, he’s really set himself up for something that can sustain itself.”

“He always said he wanted to leave the hospital in better shape than he found it, and I think he has and I think it’s obvious.”