The Nugget Newspaper - News and Opinion from Sisters, Oregon

After 20 years caring for patients in Sisters as a general practitioner at High Lakes Health Care, Dr. Eden Miller is shifting her practice to focus on her area of special expertise: diabetes care.

That specialty has earned Dr. Miller — who was diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes in medical school — an international reputation; she has traveled the world lecturing and sharing her expertise and experience with the increasingly prevalent disease.

In what she describes as “a lateral move,” Dr. Eden is now practicing in Bend in a smaller practice model titled Diabetes and Obesity Care. The clinic will operate four days a week with Dr. Miller and PA Stacy Caldwell, with Fridays devoted to research. One of the research projects will involve a trial of a continuous glucose-monitoring device.

Such devices, Dr. Miller believes, have the potential to “revolutionize diabetes care” by giving patients real-time information that allows them to have more control over their own disease.

“You can’t make meaningful decisions if you don’t know your glucose at the time,” Dr. Miller said.

Continuous monitoring allows patients to understand how exercise, food, sleep, and stress affect their diabetes.

The program is recruiting candidates for the trial through June for people 18 years of age and older with Type 2 diabetes who are not taking insulin. For more information, contact Kasey Nothiger at 541-639-2517.

Such projects are an example of the way Dr. Miller hopes to “marry what I do in the office and out of the office.”

She says she’s not leaving general practice patients behind; the shift in focus simply aligns with the evolution of her work and allows her and her husband, Dr. Kevin Miller (who is staying at High Lakes Health Care), to continue to stay in Central Oregon.

“The current work I’m doing in the U.S. and internationally kind of leads me to going into a different arena,” she said. “We felt like this was home and we could keep it home. A lot of thought went into it. It wasn’t a fast decision.”

According to High Lakes, Dr. Kevin Miller and David Kirkpatrick, PA-C will remain as full-time providers at the High Lakes Sisters clinic. The clinic announced that it is “partnering with the group Endocrinology Services NorthWest. Kelsey Perfect, PA-C will be rotating to High Lakes Sisters on Mondays beginning in May. She is also available at their Bend office, or available for a telehealth appointment. Dr. Kevin Miller and David Kirkpatrick will help facilitate … diabetic care with Kelsey Perfect as seamlessly as possible.”

In a note to patients, Eden said, “I consider all of you more than just patients, but rather friends. As we all know, closing chapters of our lives can be challenging, but I am looking forward to new ones and the opportunities they can bring.”

For Dr. Miller, the opportunity is to work with a high level of intensity and focus in a field in which her passions and her expertise and her life experience intersect.

“It’s work,” she said. “I won’t deny it. It’s work but it doesn’t feel like work.”

She said that it is immensely satisfying “to be working at the top of (her) training… I’m really coming home with all the stuff I’ve learned.”

Diabetes and Obesity Care is located at 185 SW Shevlin Hixon Dr., Ste. 111, in Bend. For more information call 541-388-6789.

Author Bio

Jim Cornelius, Editor in Chief

Jim Cornelius is editor in chief of The Nugget and author of “Warriors of the Wildlands: True Tales of the Frontier Partisans.” A history buff, he explores frontier history across three centuries and several continents on his podcast, The Frontier Partisans. For more information visit www.frontierpartisans.com.

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