New York City-based Hospital for Special Surgery and Los Angeles-based Cedars-Sinai are considered leaders in spine surgery on the East and West Coasts.
This year, HSS earned its 15th consecutive No. 1 ranking for orthopedic hospitals by U.S. News & World Report, and Cedars-Sinai Medical Center was included in the same ranking.
Having a strong surgeon recruitment strategy and keeping them there has helped Cedars-Sinai's spine program stay strong.
"It's easy to recruit the best," according to spine co-director David Skaggs, MD. "It's hard to retain the best, and the way we do it is by recruiting people who are mission driven. The spine surgeons who are successful here aren't going after the dollar, they're going after the unrelenting pursuit of excellence in clinical care, research and education. You know, people who are mission driven to make spine care better, to train better surgeons, they're happier."
Spine surgeon faculty also get the opportunity to learn from each other at Cedars-Sinai by presenting their surgical cases to each other.
"I think it's very valuable to see, even as somebody who's been in practice for a long time," spine co-director Alexander Tuchman, MD, said. "My practice is very focused on open deformity, and seeing pre and post op results from people who are focused on different aspects highlights and improves my ability to take care of my own patients sometimes by seeing different perspectives to treat my own patients."
At HSS, co-chief of spine Andrew Sama, MD, said mindset is also key to remaining on top of orthopedics.
"It's like baseball or football," Dr. Sama told Becker's. "Just because you win one game doesn't guarantee you're going to win the next one. You really have to think meaningfully about how we operate, the patients we serve, how we deliver care to them and doing that in a financially and fiscally responsible way. We put our patients first, and we basically build our care delivery around what we believe to be best for the patients. We listen to their feedback via surveys and then try to respond appropriately. We've built out a new operations team, we've changed leadership with the new CEO and president and surgeon in chief. With that, we have a new operations officer. We've been able to do what we've done well for the last 15 years and think about how it dovetails into what's coming in the future, and then strategize to deliver the best possible care to as many patients as we can touch."