Dr. Allen Frank Fischer, MD

About Me

I was born in Philadelphia in 1955 and went to high school in the Philadelphia suburbs. I attended college at the University of Pennsylvania in West Philadelphia. When I started college I had no idea what direction I wanted to head in professionally. When I was a freshman I found a summer job doing computer data analysis for a research group at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. That summer job turned into a four year project that brought me into contact with a group of research scientists and pediatricians committed to understanding and treating diseases in infants and children. The experience had a major influence on my subsequent career choices.

After I graduated from college I moved to the San Francisco Bay Area to attend Stanford Medical School. During medical school I became increasingly interested in the care of children. After graduation, I stayed at Stanford, completing my internship and residency in pediatrics and a postdoctoral fellowship in neonatology. I …met my wife while she was working as a nurse in the neonatal intensive care unit at Stanford. I was married near the beginning of my fellowship and my daughter was born at Stanford Hospital two years later. After completion of my fellowship I was appointed to the faculty of the Division of Neonatology. The focus of my practice was the application of extracorporeal circulatory support to the treatment of term and near term infants with heart and lung failure.

In 1990 I decided to leave Stanford and join the Kaiser Permanente’s hospital in Sacramento. My son was born at Kaiser Permanente several months after we moved to Sacramento. During the years that I practiced in Sacramento, my primary focus was on clinical care. I also worked with the staff at the Kaiser Division of Research to build the first Kaiser Permanente neonatal database. Information from that database has formed the basis for many research papers and quality projects that have improved the care of newborn babies at Kaiser Permanente.

In 1998 I moved to Walnut Creek to assume the role of Director of Neonatology at the Kaiser Hospital in Walnut Creek. In early 2001 my administrative role expanded when I became the Regional Director of Neonatology for Kaiser Permanente in Northern California. I spend about half of my time looking at ways to improve the care of the 35,000 babies who are born in our Northern California hospitals each year. I spend the other half of my time caring for newborns and premature babies at the Walnut Creek Hospital.

My Credentials

Medical school Stanford University, Stanford, CA
Internship Stanford University, Stanford, CA
Residency Stanford University, Stanford, CA
Fellowship Stanford University School of Medicine, Stanford, CA
Board certification Pediatrics, American Board of Pediatrics
Board certification Neonatal-Perinatal Medicine, American Board of Pediatrics