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Choose Right Orthopedic Specialist
This includes diagnosing, treating and rehabilitating all musculoskeletal regions of the body — joints, bones, tendons, ligaments, tendons, cartilage, connecting soft tissues and nerves. Orthopedic services offered at Scripps comprise:
- Hip replacement surgery
- Sports medicine
Locating a fantastic orthopedic surgeon, or any good doctor for that matter is more challenging than looking for a good mechanic or finding the best restaurant. As many new physician review sites have emerged in the last 5 years, from a doctor’s standpoint, these sites render a lot to be desired.
A Good Orthopedic Surgeon or Doctor
Online review sites like healthgrades.com can emphasize great doctors, but this is certainly not the only source I would use to vet a Best Orthopedic Surgeon. Many doctors I trust and refer the family to have horrible online reputations. Most doctors don’t devote some time to track their online reputation. Consequently, a couple of sour apples (that is unavoidable in any service-oriented area ) often tend to control the available reviews and skew the understanding of their physician. For most good physicians, the bulk of individual referrals come through word of mouth. Thus, not all doctors are interested in spending time to cultivate their online reputation.
Professional Orthopedic Surgeons
First and foremost you want to make sure your orthopedic surgeon has the appropriate credentials to treat you. Not all Dentists are made equal. Some may have additional technical training in a particular discipline such as hand surgery, sports medicine injuries, spine surgery, etc.. Take note there are several sub-specializations that have similar titles but reveal a different type of training. Based on the skill set you are seeking, certain training might be more applicable than others. If you are comparing physicians, you might even compare the quality of the institutions where the doctor received their training. Any instruction program that involves a high volume hospital likely gave the doctor an opportunity to learn their craft effectively. Professional associations such as the American Academy of Orthopedic Surgeons also maintain a searchable database of the members.
Experienced Orthopedic Surgeon
Do not be afraid to test how much experience your good orthopedic doctor has with a given procedure. Call and inquire about their office how many of the specific operations of attention the doctor has done. You may not necessarily get a straight answer on the telephone, but inquiring just how many of a specific situation a surgeon does per month may provide you an objective way of comparing one surgeon’s own body of expertise with others. If you are investigating a problem applicable to some Medicare population, a roundabout way of checking the number of Medicare patients a doctor is visiting is by using the public medicare claims database (see it : Medicare Unmasked: Behind the Numbers).
Must Be a Skillful Orthopedic Surgeon
Use it with a grain of salt. A Best Orthopedic Surgeon limit their Medicare insurance exposure therefore perhaps it doesn’t tell the full story; but if your intended doctor sees 50th percentile of the volume of Medicare patients for their region, you can bet they are getting a lot of word of mouth referrals among the Medicare peer group. Determine their years of expertise. The prime for an orthopedic surgeon is normally ages 40-50. By age 40 the surgeon has experienced enough repeats to hone their abilities. At this age, they are still eager to embrace new technologies and introduce them to their practice. After age 50, maybe not all surgeons, however for a few, human nature takes hold, along with the trend is to become a routine and become more complacent as fresh things emerge.
Identify Great Orthopedic Surgeons In Your Community.
Obviously this does not describe everyone and is a gross generalization, but avoiding the maximum senile of surgeons is likely a smart idea. Where does that leave the consumer? This makes it quite hard to vet a fantastic orthopedic surgeon out of using review sites. I’ve found using these approaches in combination with information gleaned on review websites can help identify great orthopedic surgeons in your community.
Beware of snake oil salesmen.
In training I had been taught it is good practice never to be the very first, but never be the last to embrace new technologies. If the doctor you’re considering is much more eager to market the newest cure-all treatment that hasn’t yet been vetted by the skilled colleagues and organizations, in lieu of more established effective therapies, I would be very exhausted. For new technologies, we frequently don’t necessarily completely know their positive AND negative outcomes. Studies and comparisons help us establish what really will be the standard of care. Personally, I prefer to let the early adopters work out the issues in technology. When the technology has passed the first muster of the orthopedic community, then only do I integrate it.
Experimental or Publication Technique
The 1 exception to this is when dealing with salvage situations or when one has exhausted all therapeutic means. In these conditions, with the lack of any better choice, it might make sense to try a more experimental or publication technique. However, if your condition does not fit that criterion, I would be averse to some physician eager to peddle a costly, from the pocket, non-insurance accepted therapy. Commonly these snake oil physicians can be identified on the basis of the web site independently. If you find a dazzling website entirely focused on some new esoteric treatment, I would not find them however great their reviews are.
Achievements in Orthopedic Surgery
The Best Orthopedic Surgeon must have a fantastic case of achievement in orthopedic surgery is the hyperbole surrounding stem cell injections. While the study is promising, no one has demonstrated that stem cells could be directed to develop new cartilage where needed, undo arthritis, reestablish ligaments, elongate tendons, tone muscles, strengthen bones, reverse aging, insert another preposterous claim here, etc. At this point, we know that stem cells may produce living cells, but we don’t know how to automatically assimilate them into the proper and desired pathways for producing cells. It’s a bit akin to trying to construct a house (desired living tissue) with a pile of wood chips (the stem cells) as opposed to tried and true logs.
