Allina Health

Allina Health family of clinics
Carlos Adams, MD: At the Allina family of clinics, we don't just care for you, we care about you. Our doctors and care teams build relationships that last a lifetime. Because the care you receive from a doctor who truly knows you and your family makes all the difference.

Narrator: Take control of your health and begin a relationship with a doctor today. With more than 50 Allina, Quello and Aspen neighborhood clinics, there's one near you.

Carlos Adams, MD: The Allina family of clinics, together we can make health care, your care.

Michelle Johnson, MD
Michelle Johnson, MD: I grew up in a small town of Barrett, Minnesota, two miles from there on our family farm. I think that has influenced me more than anything about what it takes to be a family practice doctor and what it means to be part of the community and part of making the community a healthier place. That's probably the most important thing to me as a family practice doctor and one of the joys that I have working in Savage now.

Sometimes the best part is the baby who comes in, sometimes the best part is the 96-year-old woman who comes in living on her own, and sometimes the best part is figuring out a difficult clinical problem. So I think that every day the best part is different.

My goal for every patient is to help them make the best decisions for them and their family and my goal as a provider is to give them the information they need to make that decision. My other goal as a provider is to respect whatever decision they make because I know that I am not them and different people have different decisions and I only have parts that they tell me about.

I do feel that I am a partner with the patient in making the right decision for them and my goal is every day to help the family make the best decision.

I think that the easiest health tip is … one of the major problems in family practice is that people complain of foot pain. As long as you don't have foot pain, you can wear whatever shoes you want. But if you have foot pain, you probably should be changing your shoes every three months and that would save you one trip to see me and by the time you see me we can take the next step.

Sumner T McAllister, MD
Sumner T McAllister, MD: My special interest in family medicine includes sports medicine, and allergies, and travel medicine. I enjoy travelling, I enjoy getting other people to travel, and so I want to make sure they are able to do it in a way that's healthy and enjoyable because I think it adds a lot when you travel, getting to meet other cultures and learning more about yourself when you travel as well.

Sports medicine: I've been physically active and I enjoy sports for myself as well as for my family. And so I like to see other people actively participating in sports in a safe way, and recovering from injuries that might happen as quickly as possible. So that's an area of interest I have. I spent three years serving as an air force physician, so I saw a lot of young healthy people with some injuries that might come from the job or other pastimes, so I got a lot of experience with sports-related injuries and want to keep people active. And then allergies, I also did that in the air force; so I have some special areas of interest and some more experience in that area, so I like keeping people doing as well as they can from seasonal allergies, and from that kind of perspective as well.

The thing I like most about my job is the diversity. Each patient is a new opportunity to meet somebody, to learn something more about them, or yourself. It's never routine; there are so many different things that can come up in the course of a visit with a patient. And it's getting to meet all kinds of different people with different backgrounds, different experiences, that help me learn more about my community, and also how I can be a better physician for those patients.

I'm sort of a coach at times, I'm a teammate at times, I'm a student at times. And so I have to be willing to change my role in order to work well with a patient to get them to the level that they want to be at, and I think they can be at, and so it's best done in a cooperative fashion. The patient has to live with his or her own body and tone conditions, and I have very limited opportunities to do as much as I can, so I really have to be encouraging them to take responsibility for their care, absolutely working with them, but it's a team approach.