By FULLER ROYAL
Staff Writer

Columbus Regional Healthcare chief operating officer Hardy Ledbetter is retiring Tuesday after 17 years with the hospital.

Ledbetter, born in Savannah, Ga., but raised on the other side of the river in South Carolina, came to Whiteville in November 1989 to work as the assistant to administrator Ralph Rogers.

Upon Rogers’ retirement, the hospital’s trustees contracted its management needs out to Hospital Management Professionals (HMP).

Ledbetter worked with a series of interim hospital managers put in place by HMP.

Eventually, HMP was purchased by Quorum, the health care management company that today runs CRH. Ledbetter has always been an employee of CRH, even though his title was changed to chief operating officer.

Only chief executive officer Bill Clark and chief finance officer Barbara Hale work directly for Quorum.

Ledbetter’s day-to-day responsibilities have been primarily the supporting and plant services of the hospital – laboratory medicine, maintenance, laundry, housekeeping, engineering, food services, pharmacy, physical therapy, occupational therapy and speech therapy.

“I manage the managers,” Ledbetter said.

“I have been in the hospital business since 1965,” he said last Friday, adding that his longest tenure anywhere has been with CRH.

“This one clicked,” he said. “It was time to stay in one place. This was the right place. I was not looking for something else when I came here.”

Ledbetter had worked with other healthcare management companies such as Sun Health and Hospital Affiliates.

In high school, Ledbetter excelled in football, earning a place on the 1955 South Carolina Shrine Bowl team.

In 1960, while a student at Presbyterian College, he played against Tennessee in the Tangerine Bowl.

After a stint in the service, he taught school and coached. While at a National Guard meeting, he was offered a job as a computer programmer with a textile mill at twice his teaching salary. He took the job.

Later, he worked as the data programming manager at University Hospital in Augusta, Ga. He said it took two and one-half shifts to get each month’s billings done.

Ledbetter said that today, the complexity of data processing requires more personnel than it used to.

That’s one of the biggest changes he’s seen in health care during the past four decades – the increase in the number of staff it takes to provide health care.

He said that technology and services once limited to major medical centers are now available at just about every hospital – MRIs, CAT scanners and state-of-the art labs and diagnostic computers.

“There are no more lab techs with Bunsen burners,” he said.

He said that the way the government enforces its medical rules has also changed.

“When I came on board, the government was asking hospitals to grow and offer more to the public,” he said. “Now, the opposite is true.”

He said hospital stays are shorter, often with patients undergoing same day surgery and sent home in the afternoon.

Ledbetter is glad he chose Columbus County.

“I have liked everything here,” Ledbetter said. “It’s a great place to work. Whiteville is a great place to live. Like all places, it has its shortcomings.”

He said he will miss the day-to-day working with people at the hospital.

“I’ll miss the caring people who are here,” he said.

Ledbetter’s management style is matter-of-fact with a generous dose of humor.

“I believe in getting people to work inside the box and think outside the box,” he said.

Ledbetter, who is in the middle of his second term as president of the Whiteville Rotary Club, doesn’t say what he’ll do as a retiree.

His wife, Anne, retired from teaching in the Robeson County public schools one year ago and then returned when a kindergarten class needed her last August.

The Ledbetters have one son, one daughter and two grandchildren.