Dr. Kyle Miller

As a medical student, I was torn between specialties for some time. The decision seemed daunting – to make a choice of one type of medicine to make a career out of. I was edging towards becoming an ophthalmologist until I spent time on my family medicine rotation, where one of my mentors relayed something to the effect of “you can be the person who checks blood pressure and cholesterol, or you can be the person who builds a practice that fits you” – which, for me, would mean a practice that involved much more than Lipitor.

Fast-forward from school to my time as an attending, I now practice at an FQHC (Community Care of West Virginia) where the company has graciously enabled me to build a practice that fits me. I practice primary care that includes addiction treatment and am based in a clinic with on-site behavioral health services, which enables a degree of care integration that can be difficult to achieve in an underserved setting. Though integrated care is often interpreted as “primary care and behavioral health”, I’ve personally sought to apply an integrated approach to the care of patients with substance use disorders – aiming to take care of the whole patient, rather than only their SUD. Thus, thanks to WVHAMP, CCWV, and my training at WVU, I now find myself treating SUDs comprehensively – I treat chronic conditions that contribute to relapse, counsel on preventive care, drain abscesses, close lingering wounds, engage in harm reduction principles, and attempt to deal with the other sequela of substance use.