Robert Bone, MD, a physician who helped found a Tennessee hospital, died March 11 at 87.
Dr. Bone grew up in Lebanon, Tenn., and graduated from Nashville, Tenn.-based Vanderbilt University School of Medicine in 1962. He served as a pediatrics resident and completed a surgical oncology fellowship at the university. He was Lebanon's first physician certified in two specialties, pediatrics and surgery, according to a March 13 Vanderbilt news release.
He worked to establish a 65-bed private, nonprofit hospital called University Hospital in Lebanon, which opened in 1979. That hospital was acquired by Vanderbilt University Medical Center in 2019 and is now a 245-bed hospital known as Vanderbilt Wilson County Hospital.
In 2016, Dr. Bone was honored by the United Neighborhood Health Services for helping to bring government-funded healthcare centers to underserved areas in the state.
Dr. Bone is survived by his wife, son, daughter, stepdaughter and three grandchildren.