Surgeon selection - level of experience

[Juli]

Hello,

I am in the process of selecting the surgeon (and hospital) and one of the numbers I am looking at is the number of surgeries that a specific surgeon is doing for AVR and related procedures. I am 58 years old and need AVR and possibly replacement of the ascending aorta. One specific local surgeon has done 30 procedures during the past 12 months (with 10 years experience in this field) - and this is claimed to be one of the higher counts in my state (Oregon).

I do understand that certain hospitals in other states have much higher volume - so I am wondering what others have considered and/or have experience with and what your decision making process was.

Thanks

JuLi

 

[AZ Don]

I looked for Dr's in the top 10% of their field using Castle Connelly: http://www.castleconnolly.com/membership/index.cfm. It costs a few dollars to join for a month which I think is well worth the cost. Then I look for the best regional hospital using US News. Here's the list w/i 500 miles of Portland, OR: http://health.usnews.com/best-hospi...and,+oregon&specialty_id=IHQCARD&distance=500. then I use Healthgrades to see how patients rated the surgeons.

Good luck.

 

[almost_hectic]

I felt pretty good about my cardiologists recommendation considering he was sending me to a different hospital than his own, and he has admitting privileges at two locally. When I asked if he recommended either of those, he didn't say no... he just said Dr. DiGiorgi at Health Park is who you want, "He does amazing things," he said. It wasn't easy to find information on Dr. DiGiorgi but when I did it confirmed everything he said. He's in surgery 4 days a week. Specializing in minimally invasive procedures, surgeons from around the country and the world apparently travel to observe his techniques. Just a visit to his office for the initial consultation was very reassuring. Every single member of his office staff was super knowledgable and very very personable and reassuring. That same trend continued when I had my surgery. Everyone on his team was amazing. Even the nurses identified that I was Dr. DiGiorgi's patient and that meant something special, because they would have a different protocol for how they did things based on how he did certain things. If I had to do it all over again, I'd choose him again without hesitation! But I got lucky that I was referred to him otherwise I dont know who I would have chosen.

 

[cldlhd]

I checked Castle Connelly to confirm my choice of the preferred surgeon in the health system I already belonged to. The fact that he was considered one of , if not the best, in my area clinched it. I went with Dr. Joseph Bavaria of the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania. Since my surgery he was named the President of the Society of Thoracic Surgeons in the U.S. which made me think I got pretty lucky. Also HUP is in the top ten among cardiology centers in the U.S. and they're high volume.

 

[Faramacho]

Juli please see below a copy from one of my writings:

HealthGrades
A very popular site for finding doctors, surgeons, hospitals, and other healthcare providers is www.healthgrades.com. HealthGrades is considered one of the leading online resources for finding comprehensive information on physicians and hospitals. More than one million people a day will visit this site to vet hospital and healthcare providers.

HealthGrades mission statement sums it up best:

Our mission is to help consumers find the right doctor and the right hospital, for the right care. We provide consumers with the information they need to make more informed decisions, including information about the provider’s experience, patient satisfaction and hospital quality… we are dedicated to delivering solutions that bring a new level of transparency to healthcare.

HealthGrades offers information on hospitals as well as doctors and it is written in a friendly, easy, non-technical language. Here you can see the mortality and complication rates of every hospital in the United States. It also offers patient satisfaction ratings using a five star system; here patients can offer their experience with the doctor as well as his office staff. Find out which doctors are board certified and what type of procedures they do the most. If you are the type of person that likes to research everything from your doctor to the institution he works within, this is the website for you. Well over 3 million healthcare providers are listed. This is a great and informative site!

Society of Thoracic Surgery
Another webpage you may find helpful is www.sts.org. This is the Society of Thoracic Surgery. Click on the "Patients" tab and browse around. There is plenty of good and useful information. They also have links for ratings of surgery groups and hospitals throughout the country. Under that same patient's tab, click on "Heart Surgery Outcomes-Public Access" and then "Adult Cardiac Surgery Database Public Reporting". It's a bit dry, but they give star ratings to hospitals and cardiac surgery groups.

 

[Paleowoman]

For anyone in the UK there is the Society for Cardiothoracic Surgery which allows patients to see hospital and surgeon profiles for the whole of the UK with mortality rates of each surgeon plus the number and types of cardiothoracic surgery each has performed over the previous three years: http://www.scts.org/patients/default.aspx