The Lawrence Memorial Hospital Board of Trustees on Wednesday chose the search firm Witt/Kieffer to guide the hospital’s search for a new CEO.

Gene Meyer, current president and CEO of LMH, announced his retirement last month and will be stepping down in May.

Witt/Kieffer, based in Oak Brook, Ill., won over the board during the interview process in early September.

“When we went through the interviews, there was a real connection there,” said LMH Board of Trustees Chairman Rob Chestnut in Wednesday’s board meeting upon announcing the board’s choice. “They were really engaged.”

The board also interviewed B.E. Smith, out of Lenexa. Those two firms had been narrowed down from a field of five.

While both firms had strong references and were successful in placing executives, each had its own style of developing a search process and creating candidate profiles, and Witt/Keiffer’s style appeared to be a good fit, Chestnut said.

Chestnut spoke to seven people who led search committees at other hospitals to gather background to help the board choose a firm.

Chestnut didn’t want to speak for the board in terms of what they were looking for in a candidate. He said the search firm will conduct interviews and site visits and develop an initial candidate composite profile, a process that will help define specific qualities the search committee should consider.

“Obviously, you’ll certainly have some consistency on the board about some qualities they want; you’ll also have some diversity, I would imagine,” Chestnut said.

Chestnut emphasized that input from all corners of the hospital and community would be vital to the search firm’s work.

“It’s important to get stakeholder input, from employees, from physicians, from private practices, from the community — everyone who will be impacted by that hire,” he said.

In other business, the board received these updates:

• Plans for space that LMH will use at Sports Pavilion Lawrence have been submitted to the city. The space will be used for wellness and educational activities. The hospital expects programming in the space to begin in January. The hospital is taking bids from contractors for the work, Todd Koch, director of facilities, said in the meeting.

• Renovations on the fourth floor, home to the Center for Rehabilitation and Wellness as well as the Transitional Care Unit for skilled nursing, are on track to wrap up in February as planned, Koch said.

• LMH has been training and is prepared for implementation of ICD-10, a new system of classification codes for insurance claims that starts Oct. 1. Joe Pedley, chief financial officer at LMH, reported at the meeting that the hospital is prepared with reserve funds in case payers that reimburse the hospital experience problems with the new coding system and payments are delayed.