Finding a Great Doctor for Senior Care

Our in-home visiting doctor, Dr. Nadeem Behjet, recently retired.  We feel grateful for his many years of medical service for residents in our home and for family members in our community.  I feel personally grateful, because Dr. Behjet helped my father through several difficult times. With Dr. Behjet’s retirement, Shady Oaks needed to search for a new in-home visiting doctor.  In this blog post, I want to share how the internet helped us learn about great local doctors.

First, we thought about our position of in-home doctor.  Our in-home doctor visits his resident patients at Shady Oaks every three months and more often as emergencies occur.  This is helpful for residents who prefer to not travel out to doctor’s offices.  This is also helpful for residents who join us from out-of-town and do not yet have a local primary care physician.  About 1/3 of our residents choose to become patients of our-home doctor.  To serve their diverse needs, we wanted an experienced, kind, local doctor, with internal medicine and gerontology experience.

How did we find such a doctor?  This is how.  I began with google searches for “doctor review bristol ct.” This led to many results.  We then prioritized looking for review and “aggregator” information hub websites. After we found the best websites, we looked inside them.  We used these websites to narrow our search to three “wish-list” doctors.  I called them wish-list, because all three had outstanding profiles.  We reached out to all of them, visited their offices, and found our ideal match with Dr. Gary Miller, MD. We feel grateful to have Dr. Miller join us.

Dr. Miller is a great doctor.  This is how we found him.

Dr. Miller’s Health Grades profile provides the following information.  The 10 ratings on this website rated Dr. Miller with an average of 4.5 out of 5.  The website tells us his office address is 61 Bradley Street in Bristol CT. This is just 3.4 miles from Shady Oaks.  His office phone number is (860) 314-6898.  Dr. Miller became a doctor in 1987 when he graduated from the University of Oklahoma, so he has about 30 years of experience.  He is now a Board Certified doctor of internal medicine and emergency medicine who has admitting privileges at both Bristol Hospital and St. Francis Hospital. He has no record of a malpractice claim or sanction against him.  He accepts many types of insurance. Fortunately for us, he is still accepting new clients.

Health Grades Profile

Here is more information about Dr. Miller from his Vitals.com profile.  This website repeats and confirms many facts from the Health Grades website.  It also tells us that Dr. Miller earned the highest level “Bridges to Excellence” award for his practice since 2014.  This award signifies “exceptional performance” for providing “superior care for patients.”  The website also provides more information about Dr. Miller’s affiliations.  According to the website, Dr. Miller has affiliations with Hospital of Central Connecticut, St. Francis Hospital, Bradley Memorial Hospital, and Bristol Hospital.  He also has connections with Ingraham Manor Nursing Home in Bristol CT, Cherry Brook Nursing Home in Canton CT, Sheriden Woods Nursing Home in Bristol CT, and several other senior care or hospital facilities. For Shady Oaks, this means Dr. Miller has deep existing experience as a visiting physician and broad connections across diverse senior care communities.  For our residents who later go to local nursing homes, Dr. Miller can remain their visiting physician.  As further evidence of his outstanding professionalism, the website lists 19 ratings which rate Dr. Miller as, on average, 4/5.  The reviews are all strongly positive for his personality and ability, while a few old reviews express concerns for his office. On 5 May 2015, Casandra Mitchell described Dr. Miller as, “Gracious, warm and kind.”

Vitals Profile

We found one more useful website, UCompare, with information about Dr. Miller.  This website again confirms many facts found on the previous websites.  What is uniquely valuable about this website? First, you will find a convenient comparison tool.  It shows that site visitors compared Dr. Miller over 190 times, which means he is in demand.  On average across 6 reviews, he earned a “Very Good” rating of 4/5.  There was one likely biased review that hurt his averages, and it was from 2011, when a reviewer said he waited too long at the office before seeing him.  If we do not count this, Dr. Miller’s average rises to 4.8/5 on this website, which is outstanding.  An 8 July 2015 reviewer describes him as, “Caring, competent, knowledgeable.  He is an outstanding diagnostician, listens to patient, and provides the best possible health care.”

UCompare Profile

I recently read a remarkable book called The Patient’s Playbook.  It includes detailed advice for selecting a primary care physician.  I recommend it, and I may summarize it in a future posting.  For this post, there is an idea to share from it.  It speaks about the importance of searching until finding the “No-Mistake Zone.”  There are many great doctors.  The key search goal is to find several great doctors and then find the best fit among them.  The internet provides excellent and improving resources for discovering great doctors.  We feel fortunate to have found Dr. Miller.