By ALEXANDER SIMONE

Staff writer

Allen Kossoy’s first day at St. Luke Hospital was Monday, and the facility wasted no time making an impression on the semi-retired allergist.

“I’m doing a lot of other things I want to do in retirement but I still like the challenge of seeing patients,” he said. “I enjoy that quite a bit.”

Having retired last year from practicing full time in Topeka, Kossoy is looking forward to seeing patients for allergies or asthma once or twice a month at St. Luke.

“Physicians are a very different breed of cat,” he said. “They’re very independent. You have to be, to do the sort of job you have to do. This model fits that.”

Appointments with Kossoy can be scheduled through the hospital.

Kossoy started as a physician in 1981, but he didn’t pick up the allergist specialty until 1985.

Working 4½ days a week as a pediatrician working on a military base in Alaska, Kossoy discovered the half day spent as an allergist was his favorite part.

“When I did the allergy stuff, I was developing relationships with patients,” he said. “That’s a chronic, long-term thing where you see them. You repeatedly help them manage their illness and develop a relationship over many years.”

While working in Topeka, Kossoy had three generations of patients from one family.

“It was much more personally appealing than the acute-care stuff,” he said.

Kossoy is contracted at St. Luke through Premier Specialty Network, a company that helps rural hospitals find specialists.

He heard about the opportunity through Kristopher Carlson, who practices urology at St. Luke on a similar basis.

It’s Kossoy’s first time with this type of arrangement where he only has to think about seeing patients.

“It’s a different model,” he said. “Any traditional physician model is to have fees for service where the physician is actively involved in a variety of things.”