Our Leadership
Rod Harkleroad, RN, MMHC
Market President, HighPoint Health System
Chief Executive Officer, Sumner Regional Medical Center
Rod Harkleroad, RN is the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Sumner Regional Medical Center (SRMC). Harkleroad serves as market president of HighPoint Health System (HighPoint), which includes SRMC as well as Riverview Regional Medical Center (RRMC) in Carthage, Tennessee and Trousdale Medical Center (TMC) in Hartsville, Tennessee.
A seasoned healthcare administrator with significant operational and clinical experience, Harkleroad has served in diverse leadership positions in North Carolina and Tennessee. Prior to his role at SRMC, Harkleroad served as CEO of Frye Regional Medical Center (FRMC), a Duke LifePoint facility located in Hickory, North Carolina. He also previously served in the HighPoint market as CEO of RRMC and TMC and as associate chief nursing officer at SRMC.
Harkleroad earned a Bachelor of Science in Nursing from Western Kentucky University in Bowling Green, Kentucky, and a Master of Business Administration and Management from Vanderbilt University’s Owen Graduate School of Management in Nashville, Tennessee. In 2019, he was named one of Becker’s Hospital Review’s “60 Rural Hospital and Health System CEOs to Know.”
John Doyle
Chief Financial Officer, HighPoint Health System
John Doyle, CPA, is Chief Financial Officer (CFO) for all HighPoint Health System facilities, including the flagship Sumner Regional Medical Center in Gallatin. He has accrued a wealth of healthcare finance leadership across multiple states including Texas, Kentucky and South Carolina.
In 1999, Mr. Doyle was an original LifePoint Health employee as CFO at Logan Memorial Hospital in Russellville, Kentucky. He was impressed with the focus on quality of LifePoint Health, and is happy to continue his career building on the strong financial base at HighPoint, so that we may continue to expand essential health care services to the communities we serve.
Geoff Lifferth
Chief Medical Officer
Geoff Lifferth, MD, FAAEM, was born in Madison, Tennessee, and has worked in the Emergency Department at Sumner Regional for the last 15 years. He did his undergraduate work at Brigham Young University, medical school at UT Memphis, and his Residency in Emergency Medicine at the Harvard Affiliated Emergency Medicine residency, working at Mass General, Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Boston Children’s Hospital.
Dr. Lifferth is board-certified in Emergency Medicine and has served in multiple leadership positions in our hospital, including previously serving as the Chair of the Ethics committee, and as the Chief of Staff for two years. He is the former vice president of the Tennessee AAEM, and currently serves on the board of directors.
He and his wife Kate have five children. He is an outdoorsman who enjoys backpacking, sailing, running and spending time with family and the Boy Scouts. He is also fluent in conversational Japanese.
Jennifer Holder
Chief Nursing Officer
Jennifer Holder, RN, BSN, MBA, CPPS, began her career as a bedside nurse at Baptist Hospital and Saint Thomas Health Services. For 11 years, she worked in multiple areas across the Saint Thomas health system including med/surg, ICU, MICU, NICU, SICU, and IV/PICC units showing her ability to adapt and be flexible with various assignments, patient populations and census levels. As stand-out nurses do, she then began to fix the issues she saw bedside by taking on a role in process improvement.
In 2013, she joined HighPoint Health System, starting off as the Director of Quality and Risk Management at Riverview Regional Medical Center (RRMC) and then serving for 2.5 years as the Director of Quality and Case Management at SRMC. While at Sumner Regional, she made significant contributions to adjusted length of stay (ALOS) reduction and focused on readmission work and enhanced regulatory compliance. She served as Chief Nursing Officer at Trousdale Medical Center (TMC) since 2017, taking on CNO duties at RRMC as well in mid-2021.
Holder’s achievements while at TMC and RRMC are numerous, including: planning and implementing the new service line for Intensive Outpatient Psychotherapy and Senior Life Solutions at TMC, increase participation rates in the Culture of Safety and Engagement Survey and high staff satisfaction rates, maintain zero contract labor and low RN turn-over rates at both facilities, and much more.