After serving for nine years, Dr. Hobart Rogers will no longer sit on the board of trustees for St. Lukes Hospital. In December, he was recognized for his outstanding service to St. Lukes Hospital by Susan McHugh, chair of the board of trustees, and Woody Woodham, former chairman of the board of trustees.

A retired orthopedic surgeon, Dr. Rogers keeps his finger on the pulse of St. Lukes and is known throughout all departments for his genuine concern. He has a vested interest in the welfare of staff and in the success of St. Lukes Hospital.

As a former chairman of the board, Dr. Rogers has also served as a liaison between the board and the medical staff, bridging their clinical needs for equipment or services with board members needs for a better understanding of clinical and financial issues.

Dr. Rogers is a former chief of staff as well as chairman of the board. In these capacities, he ensured that St. Lukes Hospitals medical staff and trustees took seriously their responsibility to make certain that St. Lukes Hospital met the mission to provide patients with exceptional care using skilled professionals, a qualified medical staff and advanced technology. Discussions ranged from patient safety issues to institutional planning, physician recruitment to a risk management plan.

As a member of the St. Lukes board of trustees, Dr. Rogers helped lead the hospital through the affiliation with Carolinas HealthCare System in 2008. He was actively involved in such changes as the conversion to critical access status, expanding wound care services, renovating the emergency department, geriatric psychiatric unit and patient registration, as well as helping to recruit physicians, including an orthopedic surgeon, to Polk County.

When hes not helping St. Lukes or the medical staff, Dr. Rogers is working to create support and funding for the areas first free medical clinic to provide primary and urgent care to those less fortunate.

Dr. Rogers was recognized by the North Carolina Hospital Association as Trustee of the Year in 2007.

Dr. Rogers is also known for helping others in third world countries when he and his wife, Helen, travel on medical mission trips. They have helped others in Egypt, Kenya, Honduras and the Dominican where he cared for victims of the earthquake in Haiti. After lamenting that the equipment was in need of repair, he was surprised when the surgery staff at St. Lukes contributed money to purchase a tray of surgical instruments Dr. Rogers now carries on his mission trips.

A native of Michigan, Dr. Rogers completed his undergraduate studies at Michigan State University. He graduated from Bowman Gray School of Medicine at Wake Forest University in 1963, completed an internship in 1964 and his residency for orthopedics in 1968 at St. Lukes Hospital in Cleveland.

Dr. Rogers served as a major in the U.S. Army at Camp Zama, Japan before settling in North Carolina at the Norris Biggs Clinic. After the clinic disbanded in 1988, Dr. Rogers opened his practice, Mid-Carolina Orthopedic Clinic, to meet the orthopedic needs of Polk and Rutherford counties. In 1996, he chose to practice at St. Lukes, retiring from his practice in neighboring Rutherfordton.

Dr. Rogers joined St. Lukes Hospitals volunteers in August 2003, shortly after retiring from his orthopedic practice in Polk County. A volunteer with the Rutherford County Free Clinic, Dr. Rogers has also served on the board of directors for Habitat for Humanity in Rutherford County, is a member of the Kiwanis Club, served as chairman of the board for six years on the Rutherford-Polk-McDowell Health District and is very active in his church.

In between his volunteer service and the medical mission work, Dr. Rogers enjoys farming, carriage driving, raising sheep and performing with the Rutherford Symphony, where he plays the French horn.