Thomas Fearn Frist (December 15, 1910 – January 4, 1998) was an American physician and businessman who co-founded the Hospital Corporation of America.

To pay for his college tuition at University of Mississippi, he published a football calendar and sold space on it to local stores and other advertisers.

[4] As one of the few practicing cardiologists in the state (it was then a new field), he engaged in some of the earliest forms of telemedicine to help treat patients in neighboring rural towns at all hours of the day and night.

[5] In 1968, with his son, Dr. Thomas F. Frist Jr., and Jack C. Massey, who helped Harland Sanders create the Kentucky Fried Chicken chain, he co-founded Hospital Corporation of America (HCA), the largest private operator of health care facilities in the world, taking the company public in 1969.

[4] He is widely regarded as "the father of the modern for-profit hospital system" in the U.S.[3] Frist embodied the caring and healing culture of HCA.

Former Tennessee Governor Winfield Dunn said of Frist: ''He was a man of such character and ability that he would have been a healer even if he had never gone to medical school.

He was truly devoted to other people.”[4]  Frist would frequently enter his hospitals through the kitchen or boiler room, shaking the hand of each employee, learning their names and about their families.

Park Manor began as a joint project between the Presbyterian Church and the Tennessee Council on Aging, on which Frist served.

He along with Hugh Knox, a moderator of the Presbytery of Middle Tennessee, and Dr. Thomas Barr, a former pastor of the Trinity Presbyterian Church, worked together to get the project approved and built, which opened its doors to community members in July 1962, and is still in operation today.

[13][5] More than half a century later, Cumberland Heights continues to operate as a successful, outcome-oriented non-profit organization committed to helping individuals struggling with substance abuse.

[3] In a letter addressed "For my family and future generations with great love," dated his 87th birthday, Frist writes, "I believe there is a God and in Jesus Christ.