Candice Frix, RN

Candice Frix, MSN, RN, CENP 
Regional Chief Nursing Officer

As CNO of St. Mary’s Health Care System, Candice provides executive leadership to a team of more than 400 nurses in the system’s hospitals in Athens, Lavonia and Greensboro. Together, the hospitals are licensed for 277 inpatient beds, plus emergency departments and surgical services at all three hospitals, as well as birthing centers and critical care units at St. Mary’s Hospital in Athens and St. Mary’s Sacred Heart Hospital in Lavonia.

Candice joined St. Mary’s in April 2022, coming to the system from Piedmont Walton Hospital in Monroe, Ga., where she had served as Chief Nursing Officer from November 2017 until joining St. Mary’s. During her tenure there, the hospital achieved the lowest nursing turnover rate in the Piedmont system for three years in a row, needed no agency nurses during the pandemic-stressed years of 2020 and 2021 due to excellent recruiting and retention, and achieved high scores for quality, patient experience and employee satisfaction.

A resident of Madison, Ga., Candice earned her Associate’s degree in Nursing at Georgia Perimeter College. She then completed her Bachelor’s degree in Nursing at the University of Texas at Arlington before receiving her Master’s degree in Nursing Administration, also from UT Arlington. Her nursing career began as a staff nurse at Rockdale Medical Center before she moved to Clearview Regional Medical Center, now Piedmont Walton.