Five Questions: Dr. Allan Allphin

Q: What is the chief of staff’s job?

A: I basically have responsibility for overseeing all the medical staff. I oversee credentialing, privileging, making sure we have adequate coverage and call coverage by all the different specialties and primary care, and to ensure a high quality of care at the hospital. I still run my full practice. I just took on some extra administrative responsibilities.

Q: Why did you decide to take on this extra job?

A: I’ve been section chair for 15 years for our section of ear, nose and throat surgeons, and I’ve been vice chief of staff for the last couple of years. So when the chief of staff stepped down, they of course asked me to consider doing it, and I agreed to.

Q: Your job entails making sure you have the most qualified people on hand. How does the current health care worker shortage affect that job?

A: With shortages of physicians, it raises our awareness. You have a lot of people who leave another hospital in another area for various reasons, and we have to do due diligence to make sure this isn’t a problem physician coming to our institution, bringing some baggage with them, or repeating the same problems he or she has had someplace else. That’s probably the biggest challenge – just making sure people are qualified to do the job. That also gets to the quality issue.

We have very high standards for patient satisfaction and quality, and that’s really what the chief of staff is trying to oversee.

Q: What other challenges do you face?

A: Another challenge is that we’re not a closed hospital. We have employed physicians through the St. John’s Clinic, but there’s also about a fifth of the medical staff that are nonintegrated physicians. We are not an exclusive staff, (and) one of my jobs, too, is to make sure that independent physicians with privileges at St. John’s have a say at what happens in the institution and that they’re represented.

Q: Tell me about your hobbies.

A: I’m an avid gardener. I grow more than 100 (types of) roses, and I grow a huge vegetable garden every year. I also enjoy riding my tandem bike with my wife, Diane, and we enjoy water skiing.

Interview by Jeremy Elwood.