Alfred E. Stillman, MD received his Bachelor of Arts with Honors in Chemistry from Cornell University College of Arts and Sciences and his MD from the New York University School of Medicine. He completed his internal medicine residency at the Kings County Hospital-Downstate Medical Center, a gastroenterology fellowship at the Harvard Division of Boston City Hospital and a geriatrics fellowship at Albert Einstein Medical Center in Philadelphia. He is board certified in all three specialties.
Dr. Stillman spent the majority of his professional life in gastroenterology but became interested in geriatrics and moved completely into that specialty sixteen years ago. He now practices geriatrics performing home visits for elderly patients who, for various reasons, are homebound and unable to obtain medical services. Dr. Stillman is an expert clinician and is able to marshal the services necessary to maintain his patients’ quality of life and independence for as long as possible in their own homes.
Dr. Stillman is a Master of the American College of Physicians and was the first non-full time academician to be awarded that honor. He was the Governor of the American College of Physicians for Massachusetts, has been chairman of medicine at two hospitals, has authored more than sixty articles and book chapters, has been a Visiting Professor at many medical schools and hospitals, is a Clinical Professor of medicine, and has received numerous awards for his teaching ability. In 2004, he received the Ralph O. Claypoole, Sr. Award from the American College of Physicians given to the physician who best exemplifies “devotion of a career in internal medicine to the care of patients”. He has recently published a book about his experiences with home visit geriatric medicine. All of the above were achieved while he was in the private practice of medicine. Most recently, he was Visiting Professor of Medicine at Taif University in Saudi Arabia and Zhejiang University in Hangzhou, China.
His passion is clinical medicine. He frequently spends 1 ½ to 2 hours with a complex patient performing a thorough history and physical examination, reviewing available data and formulating a differential diagnosis and plan of action. His patients love him. He is not technically adept, is not a fast typist, and is not facile with a computer. But, he is a member of a rapidly diminishing breed of expert clinicians who rely on clinical skills to interpret and diagnose patient problems. He has always been considered to be a “doctor’s doctor.”