Written by: Brooke Bloom Lam • September 8, 2014• South Miami Top News

Drs. Phillips, Miller and Roca: A Close-Knit, Family-Oriented Practice

Do you feel like a number, a stranger in your doctor’s office? Do you endure overbooked appointments, packed waiting rooms, and a lack of returned phone calls? Patients want visits to their medical providers to be less cold and clinical, and more warm and comfortable, especially when it comes to more personal issues such as gynecological and obstetric related visits.

Drs. Phillips, Miller, Roca

Sadly, a dismissal and indifferent attitude is all too often the experience of patients in so many physicians’ offices these days.

Thankfully, Drs. Edward F. Phillips, Joyce R. Miller and Luis E. Roca work diligently to create a close-knit, family-oriented practice. “We take pride in the attention we give our patients,” says Dr. Miller. “Patients with us won’t get lost in the shuffle,” adds Dr. Roca. Practice Administrator, Mary Jane Nelson, has been with Dr. Phillips since he began his practice and takes pride in the warm and welcoming front desk staff and the caring medical assistants. As she says, “They are the best in town!” Striving for the highest of quality care, Dr. Phillips says their office, located in South Miami, seeks to provide “a comfortable environment and positive experience for all our patients.”

Phillips, Miller and Roca, founded in 1991, has evolved over time and is “exactly as I planned it and couldn’t be better,” says Dr. Phillips. With quarterly patient satisfaction surveys, Drs. Phillips, Miller and Roca actively make an effort to listen to their patients in order to provide the best experience possible. This has resulted in not only great medical care, but life-long relationships. “Over the years, I have developed close relationships with my patients and many are my dear friends,” says Dr. Miller. “I treat each annual visit as more than just a yearly checkup, as it gives me the opportunity to catch up on the lives of my patients,” she adds.

Their patients wholeheartedly agree. Alicyn Drujak, currently under Dr. Roca’s care, has been a patient for years and couldn’t be happier. “My experience with Drs. Phillips, Miller and Roca has been wonderful,” Drujak says. “I never hesitated to return to them with my second pregnancy.”

For pregnant patients, Dr. Roca and Dr. Phillips are the two primary physicians for obstetrical care. When it comes to delivery, “you’re pretty much guaranteed one of the two of us,” Dr. Roca says. This avoids the need for a patient to have to rotate around a large office on every visit and reduces the risk of being delivered by a doctor that the patient doesn’t know. Dr. Roca adds that “even when we aren’t the doctor on call, if there’s a relationship with the patient, and they specifically request a doctor, we can often accommodate and come in.”

Although Dr. Roca started medical school with plans to specialize in internal medicine, a delivery on the first day of his third-year medical rotation changed his life. “I knew then this was what I wanted to do the rest of my life.” Over 1,000 deliveries later, the sentiment remains. “I still get a surge, a sense of amazingness every time I deliver a baby,” Dr. Roca says. “It’s an overwhelming sensation.” Dr. Phillips agrees, calling their chosen profession “the best field ever.”

In practice now for 22 years, Dr. Miller’s draw to OB/GYN was very natural. “As a woman, I felt a connection with my patients,” she says. “It is a happy field with healthy resilient woman,” she adds. No longer practicing OB, Dr. Miller treats patients from adolescence to the post-menopausal years, dealing with a wide array of gynecological issues from pelvic pain to hot flashes and hormone replacement therapy testing. She also performs procedures in the office such as colposcopies and diagnostic hysteroscopies and outpatient procedures which include laparoscopies and operative hysteroscopies, just to name a few. “I call my office my sanctuary, my comfort zone,” Dr. Miller says. “What can I say, I love what I do.”

Aside from the three primary physicians, Phillips, Miller and Roca also have a Nurse Practitioner on staff. Katie Fitzgerald, ARNP, was a patient of the practice before she worked there. “It’s a very family oriented practice,” Fitzgerald says. “We are a family here.” Practicing in the strictly gynecological realm, Fitzgerald has been carving out a niche of her own. Although she sees patients of all ages, the majority of her patients are in their twenties. Fitzgerald works with adolescents and young women on prevention options, counseling, and administering vaccinations, including the HPV vaccine, Gardasil, the Hepatitis A and B vaccines, TDAP and the flu shot. Having a great rapport with young adults, Fitzgerald is also a popular choice for well-woman exams.

Offering more than routine care, Drs. Phillips, Miller and Roca are among only a few offices in South Florida currently offering a new kind of pelvic floor therapy. “One out of every four women have a complaint of a degree of urine loss or incontinence,” says Ana Bueno, the office’s Registered Nurse, “which they think is a normal part of aging or child birth.” Many patients don’t realize that this condition is treatable. The office now offers a non-invasive, natural concept to help strengthen the pelvic floor muscles. The program, called Femiscan, combines an interactive home trainer with assessment software administered by Bueno. The home trainer is individually programmed to teach women how to use Kegel exercises effectively. “When done correctly, there is an 80% success rate of improvement,” says Bueno. “By two months, we see gains not just subjectively from reports of symptoms, but objectively through measurements taken in the office.” A typical cycle, covered by most insurance, spans over four months with short, daily home exercises and two office visits per month.

Patients of Drs. Phillips, Miller and Roca receive not only great care from doctors who love what they do, but there are added perks too. As Dr. Phillips says, “Dr. Roca, the guy looks like Superman. He’s very easy on the eyes.”

When looking for a caring, competent and concerned OB/GYN practice, there’s no better choice than Phillips, Miller and Roca.

The office of Drs. Phillips, Miller and Roca is located at 7000 SW 62nd Ave, Suite 350, South Miami, FL 33143. You can reach the office at 305-665-9644 for more information or to make an appointment.

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Last modified: September 8, 2014