Total joint replacement in a hospital or a surgery center

Many people just expect that their joint replacement needs to be performed in a hospital setting. These same people don’t understand how far we have come in the past 10 or so years with total joint replacement and plan to stick with the status quo. I am striving to educate people that this is (in the vast majority of cases) not necessary.  

Over the past ten years I have seen a drastic difference in surgical techniques and patient care strategies that have allowed us to move these major surgeries to an outpatient surgery center. I have incorporated all of these techniques in a pursuit for the best possible surgical experience for my patients.

Techniques and strategies like robotic total joint replacement, minimally invasive and muscle sparing approaches to the joint, and advanced anesthesia techniques have allowed us to provide the patient with a major (life changing) surgery without the extended hospital stay and without the high pain profile after surgery. This has improved the overall patient surgical experience but has also led to improved rehabilitation and recovery, improved satisfaction, allowed better return to higher level activities, and increased patient safety.

I aim to provide a very patient-centric experience from your first call to your final visit. Performing most of my surgeries now in a surgery center has made the encounter more streamlined, convenient, and personalized. Rather than wait months to get an appointment for surgery at a hospital, we schedule appointments faster and strive to be more transparent about our procedures, taking into account the safety of my patients first and foremost.

Regarding patient safety, because of the Coronavirus pandemic, there are a lot of people who have avoided coming into the doctor for chronic pain issues or joint pain and they often are delaying surgery for fear of going into a hospital and contracting COVID. But at an outpatient facility we’re able to do these procedures in healthy individuals without them having to go into a hospital, where they will be surrounded by sick people. These facilities follow all the COVID-19 guidelines and there is virtually no COVID in a facility like this. So, people should feel very confident that they will be able to come in, get the care or surgery that they need and be better off for it. 

If healthy enough to do so, having joint replacement at an outpatient surgery center is really the only way to go when planning your upcoming surgeries.