Samaritan Healthcare selects interim administrator

The Board of Commissioners has selected Phil Sandifer to be the Interim Administrator for Samaritan Healthcare. He arrived at Samaritan on Monday April 24 to start his orientation. He will begin fulltime in the position beginning Tuesday June 1 and will continue through the summer while the Board of Commissioners works with Witt-Keifer, national executive search firm, to recruit a permanent CEO.

"Having an Interim Administrator allows the Board the time to make a thoughtful decision about a permanent CEO", explained Sandifer. Sandifer will be meeting with Hospital Commissioners, physicians, Department Directors and others to determine the traits they would like to see in a permanent CEO and what they consider to be the priorities for the future. In addition to helping the Board define leadership needs, Sandifer wants keep Samaritan moving forward. "We want to continue the great progress that has been in the past few years by moving forward with goals outlined in the Strategic Plan", Sandifer commented.

Sandifer has over twenty-five years of diverse and progressive senior leadership experience in health care administration. From 1983 to 2000 he was the CEO of Island Health Northwest and Island Hospital, an award winning JCAHO accredited public hospital district in Anacortes, Washington. Currently, Phil is Co-Principal in the Lakes Group, a health care consulting firm located in Kirkland, Washington. This will be Phil's fourth Interim Administrator assignment in the past three years. Previous geographic locations have been Merced and Santa Cruz, California and Glendive, Montana.

While CEO of Island Health Northwest Phil, was instrumental in the successful development, implementation, and completion of an aggressive and innovative strategic plan. Some highlights of that plan involved the:

B Organization of a primary care network with the network providing practice administration support services to eight separate practice locations

B Development of a profitable Physician Hospital Organization (PHO)

B Implementation of a nationally recognized state-of-the-art information system linking forty-six physician offices with 900 on-line users to the hospital

B Planning and construction of a 24,000 square foot medical office building

As a result of the strategic plan accomplishments, Island Hospital was selected by the American Hospital Association's Hospitals and Health Networks magazine as the winner of the "Greatest Comebacks" contest for hospitals under 100 beds in the United States.