Oh no - my doctor is retiring - What do I do?

Hello- I hope that we all survived the holidays. I did knowing that before the end of the year my long time friend and pulmonologist was retiring and needed to find a new one. She was my first contact with the cancer field 21+ years ago. I Love her. She was available night and day for her patients.
She gave me five recommendations. I also asked my Thoracic Surgeon who use to work in my state. And now I have one.
There are a number of things that we need to be concerned with:
These are some of the things that I considered:

Hospital affiliation(s)
Office location(s)
Educational background
Specialty interests
Languages spoken
Years in practice
Gender
Types of insurance accepted
Review CV if available (often on affiliated hospital website).
Check out patient reviews (take them with a grain of salt in case they are skewed by an unfairly disgruntled patient).
Make sure they’re accepting new patients.

Has anyone else needed to find a new doctor and how did you make your decision? I realize that it's not that simple because of the differences in insurance companies. We can't always get who we want, and that's disheartening and scary.