ELIZABETHTOWN — Stephen Fife, an interim leader at Bladen County Hospital for nearly a year, is the permanent replacement as president and chief financial officer for the county’s largest medical facility.

Fife was director of the Finance Department when Mark Cobb left the hospital on Nov. 21. He and Traci Priest, the director of Nursing, were given interim leadership roles at the time of his departure. The hospital is a part of the Cape Fear Valley Health System.

Fife, from Kenansville in nearby Duplin County, came to the hospital in 2014 as the manager of the Finance Department. He had been with Vidant Duplin Hospital, an auxilary of its parent organization by the same name in Greenville.

The hospital has had a series of leaders — Fife is the fourth — since 2014 when Daniel Weatherly left for Harnett Healthcare.

He was followed in the Elizabethtown hospital by Lisa Byrd in November 2014, Dr. Roxie Wells in August 2016 and by Cobb in April 2019. Byrd was interim president after Weatherly left. Wells was actually leading two hospitals at once, having served Hoke Hospital since it opened in March 2015; she continued in that role after her time at Bladen County Hospital. Cobb had been a practice administrator for Bladen County when he joined the Cape Fear Valley Health family in 2016.

The latest move comes two weeks shy of 10 months since the hospital lost Cobb on Nov. 21.

Fife has a master’s from East Carolina University in business administration, and earned his undergrad in accounting at UNC Wilmington’s Cameron School of Business.

A release from Cape Fear Valley Health says “Fife will use his experience and leadership to help Bladen County Health continue its mission of providing health care to the residents of Bladen County.”

Cape Fear Valley is the state’s eighth largest health system, with about 850 physicians and 7,000 employees across eight hospitals and more than five dozen primary care and speciality clinics. The systems serves about 800,000 people in southeastern North Carolina.

The hospital has undergone a number of changes, in part because of Hurricane Florence that struck in September 2018. The surgical suite, and the labor and delivery unit, were among the parts of the hospital badly damaged by the storm.

The labor and delivery unit never reopened, with the health system announcing in January 2019 a permanent closure.

Alan Wooten can be reached at 910-247-9132 or awooten@bladenjournal.com. Twitter: @alanwooten19.