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Joe CoferAge: 64Job: Chief quality officer at Erlanger Medical Center, Affiliate Professor of Surgery at the University of Tennessee Health Science Center-ChattanoogaEducation: A native of Beckley, W. Va., Cofer grew up in Chattanooga, graduated from Georgia Tech and the University of Tennessee at Memphis and served as a naval flight surgeon. He completed his residency in Chattanooga and completed a fellowship in liver and kidney transplantation at Baylor University Medical Center in Dallas.Career: After completing his medical degree at the University of Tennessee Health Science Center, he served in the U.S. Navy as a naval flight surgeon. He was program director for the surgery residence program at Erlanger for 20 years before taking his current job in July.Honors: Chairman of the Tennessee Surgical Quality Collaborative leadership committee; elected in 2013 to lead the American Board of Surgery, the national certifying board for surgeons; founder and chair of Project Access, a program based on donated services and medical care for those in need; president of the Association of Program Directors in Surgery; received the Tennessee Medical Association’s distinguished service award in 2007.
Growing up in Beckley, West Virginia, Joe Cofer wanted to be an engineer like his father and went to Georgia Tech to pursue his dream of learning to design airplanes. He quickly learned his engineering interests were more in industrial engineering than fluid dynamics, physics and other aerospace-related disciplines.
Cofer graduated with a degree in industrial engineering and was on his way to work at Texas Instruments in Dallas when he said he realized he really wanted to practice medicine like his grandfather. His grades weren’t good enough to get into med school right away so he enrolled in the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga as a post baccalaureate special student and found a passion he is still pursuing four decades later.
After earning his medical degree in Memphis, Dr. Cofer got a surgery clerkship at Erlanger Medical Center and has never left the hospital. At Erlanger, he met his mentor, Dr. Phillip Burns, who later called Cofer, by then a gifted surgeon, to become program director for Erlanger’s surgery residence program.
Cofer worked for two decades at Erlanger to ensure that resident surgeons were adequately trained in all areas and able to sit for their boards to become effective licensed surgeons. While performing surgeries himself and helping train future surgeons, Cofer helped lead the effort to establish the award-winning Project Access in Chattanooga for physicians to donate their time to give medical care for thousands of low-income persons each year. In 2013, Cofer was elected chairman of the American Board of Surgery, the national certifying board for surgeons.