Search still on for Sunshine Clinic director

TALKEETNA — Applications are coming in and candidates will soon be screened for the top job in a rural medical clinic that last year worked through serious personnel issues and then weathered a major tragedy — the accidental death of a well-respected healer and focus of the staff controversy.

Concerned residents came to the Sunshine Community Health Clinic this past week to learn about the nonprofit’s progress in choosing a successor to former director Bruce Wiegman. His resignation in March was announced during a packed board meeting at which hours of heated and critical public testimony was aimed at the clinic’s governing board.

The most recent meeting was a marked contrast to that angry gathering. Search Committee Chair Tom Phillips told the audience that the clinic’s board hopes to have the new director by December. The application period ends Sept. 11.

Phillips, a Willow resident, said public inclusion in the process is important to the directors. “We’re just looking for all the community input we can,” he said.

Wiegman was hired last year but resigned after just months in the face of staff dissent and some public uproar over the pending departure of a physician’s assistant who had been a clinic leader. A petition in support of physician’s assistant Jessica Stevens was being circulated.

Stevens is credited with saving the clinic from financial disaster and leading its expansion into a publicly subsidized clinic and after hours care facility. She resigned over a perception clinic management was blaming her for deficiencies in the organization.

The emotional March meeting brought scores of Stevens supporters to the clinic board’s meeting asking that the clinic seek to reinstate her. By the end of that meeting the board had accepted the clinic chief’s resignation. Stevens was planning to leave the clinic in June, but was killed that month in a three-vehicle crash on the Parks Highway. Family speeches given at her funeral indicated she was still emotional over her pending departure and treatment by clinic management.

It is in this climate the board seeks a new leader. This time around the board is asking residents to write down what they want in an executive director and how they perceive that person’s role at the clinic.

“My personal goal is to try to make sure the community and staff was more satisfied with the process,” Phillips said.

Due to confidential information submitted by applicants no community members were included on the search committee, but there are three board members and three clinic staff members.

To give the board input into what qualifications community members think the new director should have, e-mail executive assistant Marie Hunt at mhunt@sunshineclinic.org.